


Create Anew

by AotA



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Abandonment, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, Alternate History, Assassination, Betrayal, Blood, Childhood Trauma, Death, Discrimination, Disownment, Espionage, False Memories, Familicide, Fratricide, Friendship, GFY, Genocide, Gore, Identity Reveal, Imperialism, Implied Mind Rape, Knights - Freeform, Lies, Loss, Loyalty, Matricide, Mecha, Military, Mind Rape, Misunderstandings, Oppression, Patricide, Rebellion, Regicide, Revenge, Revolution, Royalty, Secret Identity, Shipper on Deck, Social Darwinism, Strategy & Tactics, Suicide, Terrorism, Time Travel, Trust Issues, Violence, War, absolved!Suzaku, altered Zero Requiem, emotional detachment, reconnecting, slight AU, sororicide, tyranny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:21:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AotA/pseuds/AotA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lelouch dies, all the obstinate hate in Suzaku's heart dies with him. The new Zero finds himself wishing that Lelouch had never been forced to go this far. He wishes that he could have blotted out the loneliness he saw in Lelouch's eyes as the supposed demon bled out upon his throne of lies. He never expects his wish to actually come true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 0: Requiem Reversed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The large, gemmed blade in Zero's hands lunges forward and pierces thin, unprotective white cloth and skin and bone and vital arteries, veins, and nerves before it exits out the other side. Lelouch makes just a small little sound, more like a gasp of surprise than of pain, but that is all. Even now, as he is dying, the ingrained doctrine to not show weakness does not release its hold on him. Blood quickly starts pouring from the wound as Lelouch slumps forward into Zero's arms and the formerly pristine white of his imperial robes stains crimson.

Unbelievably, Lelouch smiles at him and it is as though all the weight of the world has been lifted off of Lelouch's too-thin shoulders. It's almost beatific and something in Suzaku cries out at the utter wrongness of it, smothering even the sting of jealousy that the person to curse him to live is allowed to die.

Suzaku's tears dampen the fabric of the mask he wears under the helmet of Zero as Lelouch anoints it with the emperor's own lifeblood, imperial blood that Suzaku has spilled with his own two hands.

" _Thank you…_ " Lelouch breaths around the wide, cutting edges of the sword lodged in his chest. Lelouch's chin comes to rest heavily on Suzaku's shoulder as his legs collapse and the entire weight of his unhealthily light body is left being held up by Suzaku's strength. Painfully thinner than even Lelouch normally is, Suzaku might as well be holding a feather. His blood soaks into the rich purple of Zero's coat, just as warm and red as any other human being's even though Lelouch has always seemed somehow larger than life to Suzaku.

Suzaku carefully lowers Lelouch back down into his throne, sliding the sword free at the same time as cleanly as he can manage. He sets the bloodied sword aside only for Lelouch's fingers to tangle in his cloak, drawing Suzaku's attention back his stricken emperor.

Lelouch's hand quickly loses its grip and falls but Suzaku doesn't hesitate to reach out and catch it, feeling the way Lelouch's fingers are already growing cold. Relief shines in those suddenly, shockingly unguarded purple eyes and somehow the loneliness there that Suzaku had done so little to alleviate in these past months... lessens a little and it is galling that such a small gesture of kindness from Suzaku could mean so much to Lelouch. Even worse, he realizes that the relief Suzaku can see is the result of Lelouch realizing that, for this small moment at least, Suzaku will not turn his back in disgust as the emperor probably expected him to and leave Lelouch to die friendless and alone as the hated and despised Demon Emperor that Lelouch had played to the hilt for the world that had been made a stage.

Clasping both of Lelouch's hands in his own, Suzaku kneels as Lelouch's eyes flutter closed and the Demon Emperor breathes his last with that peaceful smile on his face. Blood drips down the front of the throne and pools around Suzaku's knees.

Suzaku closes his eyes and bows his head, unable to help but tremble a little as his duty to both Lelouch and Euphemia is discharged, leaving him shaken and empty inside. His anger is gone, as though Lelouch has sucked all the poison called hatred out of him. It hurts, but it is a numb sort of pain that comes after cleaning an infected wound. It is a cleaner sort of pain, but all he feels is that it is going to leave a horrific scar on him. Better a scar than a festering sore that scabs over and reopens to bleed out the hatred and rage in it time and time again.

It's done, just like he has wanted. Just like Lelouch had wanted. The cheers of the crowd, formed of Britannians and all kinds of former Numbers alike, ring tinnily in his ears over the roaring of his blood.

The problem is that the wound Lelouch had closed was far from the only one Suzaku had collected over the years. He had pretended, even to himself, that the hurts Lelouch had given him were so egregious, so deserving of disgust and hatred that he could pretend that the loathing he held only and ever toward himself was somehow lesser.

It isn't, and wasn't, true.

For making Lelouch into the effigy of his own sins… Suzaku has merely compounded his own.

His stomach churns with guilt and bile despite his inner numbness, because... because...

It is wrong.

This isn't that he wanted.

This isn't what he wanted at all, but he was too blind, too bullheaded to admit it until it was too late to change, because Lelouch had asked for Suzaku's forgiveness for Euphemia's death with his life and Suzaku had, in his anger, accepted. It was meaningless though because... Suzaku had already forgiven him.

Sickening. That's what it is.

That Suzaku would drive Lelouch to think that letting Suzaku kill him after making the rest of the world "realize what a monster he is" was the only way Lelouch could earn Suzaku's forgiveness is just sickening.

"Zero! Zero! Zero!" the crowds chant as they cheer the death of a demon, totally unaware that their supposed champion is just as monstrous under the famous mask and elaborate costume as they thought Lelouch to be. Suzaku "The White Death" Kururugi, Schniezel, Emperor Charles, and Britannia itself had driven Lelouch into a corner after taking everything from him. Is it any wonder that he had resorted to such horrible things when he had literally no one and nothing left to lose?

Not his sister.

Not his subordinates.

Not his friends.

Nothing.

Not even Suzaku, as he stood at Lelouch's side physically had been there for him in any meaningful way. He had instead favored leaving it up to C.C.'s ineffectual, emotionally detached attempts at support to keep Lelouch alive long enough to complete this Zero Requiem.

Long enough for Suzaku to kill him.

_Never again._

The only thing that Lelouch had had left was his life, and now even that is gone, leaving behind a legend of terror as an object lesson to the world, one written in the blood of countless victims and Lelouch himself: sic semper tyrannis.

It doesn't matter that the tyrant is just another mask worn by one of the world's greatest performers, one of the greatest liars.

It doesn't matter because Lelouch is dead, and it is Suzaku who is the liar now.

He wishes, as the roar of the crowd seems to fade away, _he wishes_ , despite knowing that geass is like a wish, that he could go back and erase all the bitter the loneliness he had seen in Lelouch's eyes. He wishes that the person who was simultaneously his best friend and fiercest, most terrible enemy would not have to do so many horrible things if, for once, Lelouch had someone on his side that he knew would not betray him and stand by his side, taking some of the burden to lighten the weight on Lelouch's shoulders.

If he could change things… no.

Never again…

Never again would he harm Lelouch.

Never again would he turn his back on the one person who needed him the most.

He wishes with all of his heart, but he knows the power of wishes is fickle and it has never granted any of his wishes before, so he does not expect this geass of his to work either.

Only... when he opens his eyes... everything has changed.


	2. Chapter 1: The Day a Demon is Reborn

Suzaku is not kneeling any longer, but somehow he has moved to be standing upright without any sense of time or movement in the transition between the two different poses. The massive amounts of Lelouch's blood is no longer soaking into his Zero outfit. Actually, he isn't even wearing the thing. Instead, for some reason he is wearing that old infantry uniform of his that he hasn't worn since he had piloted the Lancelot the first time and had been unceremoniously pulled into A.S.E.E.C. by Lloyd.

He doesn't have time to try to figure out what this might mean before his thoughts are derailed by an incensed shout.

"—then obliterate Britannia!" The furious, _familiar_ proclamation drags Suzaku's distracted attention to the world around him.

Lelouch, a younger Lelouch, not the older, sadder Lelouch, is glaring balefully at him with fire in his eyes. It is a fire that Suzaku hadn't even realized that his old friend had lost somewhere along the way until he sees it again, right in front of him. After just coming face to face with and having a direct hand in the end result of Lelouch's ultimately lethal fatalism, it is like a punch to the gut. His unrelenting guilt makes his stomach lurch at the reminder that he'd had a hand in destroying his own best friend.

Suzaku can't help but stare, because this is... Lelouch. Not Zero the Revolutionary and not the Demon Emperor. Just Lelouch.

Not that Lelouch is ever "just" anything.

It is the Lelouch that he'd thought he'd lost in the bitter battles they had fought with words and knightmares both. It is the Lelouch that Suzaku had realized too late had just hidden himself under countless masks created to protect himself against those who would hurt him, use him, and kill him.

"Lelouch?" he calls, choked and uncertain if this is some sort of fever dream or nightmare, because it certainly isn't some strange, timely miracle. He doesn't believe in miracles.

Just as his wishes never come to be, miracles never happen to him. In the same way, his hopes are inevitably crushed, so he doesn't hope. What he does is _act_.

His surroundings are far too chillingly familiar for this to be a miracle anyway. This is Shinjuku Ghetto, in the dark of the Underground, and he is standing in the trailer that holds the so-called "poison gas" container that keeps C.C. prisoner.

Lelouch visibly startles and draws back a half step, wincing slightly in pain from having been on the receiving end of one of Suzaku's brutal kicks and a chokehold. He glares at Suzaku with fearful determination regardless. "How do you know my name?" he demands, smothering any sign of his trepidation by drawing on every bit of his, technically nonexistent, princely authority.

The ploy of attempting to receive deference by acting as though it is his right to demand is such a laughably old tactic that Suzaku hasn't seen Lelouch use it since... ever, actually, not without his geass, or weapons, or blackmail acting as the iron fist behind the velvet glove of his words. It reminds Suzaku that if this is the Lelouch before Zero, before he has started commanding rebels for the first time, then he is _hiding_. And Suzaku, who would seem to be just another Britannian foot soldier, has just recognized Lelouch while he has Lelouch at a stark disadvantage, making him a clear and present danger to the exiled prince.

He winces and removes his helmet, showing his face in an attempt to calm the anxious churning of Lelouch's mind as it undoubtedly attempts to plot a way out of imminent disaster, "It's me, Lelouch, Suzaku." Somehow, the words of reintroduction aren't nearly as fitting this time. It feels more like seeing Lelouch again for the first time after Lelouch had been forcibly returned to Ashford with his memories altered. It hadn't been the real Lelouch but a flat, ambitionless copy that had been muzzled, with his fangs of hatred for the empire dulled. That Lelouch didn't have a sister, but instead a little "brother" at his side who held a knife at Lelouch's back in case the terrorist underneath tried to slip free of the noose the emperor had wound about his neck.

It is like meeting Julius Kingsley for the first time and seeing the lights on behind his one visible eye but knowing that there is only a stranger there. Even if that stranger still had all of Lelouch's mannerisms, from his towering arrogance to the only thing that matched it, which was his equally overpowering skill in strategy, he had none of the memories that had made him into the Lelouch Suzaku had known. Suzaku was just another Rounds to "Kingsley" and they shared nothing more than the briefest of acquaintanceships.

Again, Suzaku isn't who Lelouch thinks he is, because their memories of events are different. Suzaku remembers far too much to be the naïve idealistic fool he had been in Shinjuku and Lelouch... Lelouch is so... _different_ from the Demon Emperor.

After dealing with his Lelouch for so long, who had far more reason to be evasive and wary of him from the very beginning as well as a much better poker face later on, he can easily read the shock and horror on this Lelouch's face underneath the habitual impassivity that he displays even now. "You became a Britannian soldier?"

The question is accusing, and the underlying current calling him _traitor_ makes Suzaku wince, because it is true in ways that he doesn't want to think about. This time though, Suzaku doesn't accuse Lelouch of being a terrorist in return. He knows better than to think Lelouch to be something so simple as a _terrorist_. Instead, he kneels, because even if this is a dream or a memory, Suzaku is still Lelouch's knight and he honestly doesn't know what to say to this younger, less burdened version of his estranged friend and liege.

Lelouch edges closer to him, confusion and curiosity flickering in his geassless eyes, "...Why are you kneeling?"

There is no doubt about him recognizing the posture because it is an iconic one in Britannian culture.

"I..." Suzaku doesn't get to answer before the container hisses and cracks open, startling Suzaku into reflexive defensive maneuvers despite the fact that he already knows that the contents aren't anything harmful, at least immediately or directly and he tackles his emperor away from it. With an explosion of light the immortal C.C. is revealed, looking just as she had when Suzaku had first seen her. Knowing what he does, Suzaku feels only trepidation at the sight of her.

Between her careless method of granting geass and her current association with Emperor Charles and Lelouch's supposedly dead mother, she is far more dangerous than she appears.

Lelouch frowns at the unconscious girl. "Poison gas? Really?" he says, dryly skeptical as he gingerly rubs his throat, moving away from Suzaku. He kneels next to the very person who gave him the power of Absolute Command, utterly unaware of who or what she is, "She looks more like a girl to me, Suzaku."

Suzaku struggles to not leap forward and smack Lelouch's hands away from the "witch" that he had long thought had corrupted the Britannian prince. It would do little to endear himself to his friend so he sat on the impulse and instead steps closer to the unconscious immortal even as Lelouch tries to wrestle her out of the contraption she was laying in. Instead of letting Lelouch hurt himself trying to carry her, Suzaku wordlessly pulls her into his arms and effortlessly out of the container's nest, only laying her down on the ground once she is outside of the truck. Even if she is a witch and had been bad for Lelouch, she had at least _tried_ to be there for him when no one else had and Suzaku owes her that much.

"She goes by C.C.," Suzaku tells Lelouch in undertone, keeping an eye toward the door where the Royal Guard had appeared from originally as he unzips the high security prisoner's straightjacket. "She is important to a lot of people, alive or dead." That would keep it simple enough without coming right out and saying that she was immortal and risk sounding like a crazy person in case they got separated. This way, at least, Lelouch would be more likely to keep her corpse if she got herself shot.

"And how does a member of the Britannian cannon fodder know this?" Lelouch hisses, sounding torn between angry and, oddly — at least to a Suzaku used to the direct opposite — protective while loosening the gag around C.C.'s mouth.

Suzaku grimaces at the very _accurate_ description of his current position in the Britannian military, "Let's just say that I've seen a lot and leave it at that."

Seen a lot. What a joke.

Of course, the moment that Suzaku takes his eyes off of the door is the moment that Clovis's Royal Guard decides to show up with a familiar insult. "Damn monkey!" the Britannian officer shouts, "Even an honorary Britannian doesn't have the authority to do what you've done!"

This time, Suzaku doesn't run up to the man like an eagerly obedient Britannian dog like he had before and instead stands with Lelouch like he should've the first time. Suzaku takes as step forward and manages a salute while he moved to stand a little more in front of Lelouch, trying to make it look incidental. "Sir," he says, "I am uncertain what you mean, sir!"

The scarred man's expression says it all to Suzaku as the Royal Guardsman visibly writes Suzaku off as a particularly _stupid_ "monkey" and therefore of little concern. Suzaku grits his teeth, counting ten men, uncertain if he can take them all out before they managed to get a lucky shot on Lelouch. Throwing a serious look towards Lelouch, hoping that he would get the message that he wasn't alone in this, Suzaku trots up to the lead officer, putting on his "pleasantly inoffensive" face. "Um... sir?" Suzaku asks sheepishly, "What did I do wrong?"

"Idiot monkey," the man sneers, "Your orders were clear: the Royal Guard are the only ones supposed to retrieve the stolen goods. But..." The officer's face twists into a thoroughly unpleasant expression, "in reward for your 'great' achievements, I'll be merciful." He draws out a pistol and holds it out to Suzaku. "Private Kururugi, use this to execute the terrorist and your collaboration with these scum will be forgotten."

Surprised by what he is pretty sure is a change in script, Suzaku blinks at the man. Collaboration? How typical of a Britannian officer to immediately think of ways to implicate a "Number." Without any more hesitation, he takes the gun, forcing himself to ignore the nervous intake of breath that is quickly cut short behind him. It hurts to think that Lelouch, even without the utter ruin they had both made of their friendship between them, could believe that Suzaku would kill _him_ of all people in exchange for something as worthless as the "forgiveness" of a noble Britannian officer. ...But Lelouch has been betrayed and abandoned enough already, even at this point in his life, so Suzaku isn't about to blame him for fearing the worst.

He hefts the unfamiliar weapon, mentally lining up all of the men he is going to have to take down, all the while hating the sadistic anticipation and the shark-like grin of the gun's owner. "Your highness..." he says out loud, cocking the gun, "I apologize in advance for the mess."

"Huh?" was the collective response of the Royal Guard before Suzaku took advantage of their confusion and guns them down.

He plants a bullet in the commanding officer's heart before taking head and heart shots — whichever happens to be most advantageous — on the sloppy soldiers who are nobles before they are guards. He kills eight before the magazine clicks dry and Suzaku spares a moment of ironic appreciation for the fool officer who had handed him a fully loaded gun because it makes everything so much easier. He only has to resorting to using his feet and fists to deal with the last two, going for quick and dirty since keeping Lelouch alive is far more important to him than any worn away sense of fair play that might be lurking in the back of his mind.

It is over in seconds and the amount of threat, or the lack thereof, means that his geass hadn't even stirred. Suzaku takes a moment to draw a steadying breath anyway.

Memory or dream, he would treat this little fantasy as if it were real and his wish had been granted. Even if it stings that whatever the strange situation he has found himself in is, he is already killing, he will continue to do so for his majesty. No. His highness. To do otherwise...

Putting the thought aside, Suzaku grabs another gun but leaves the others after checking the ammunition. One missing gun might be overlooked, but more would invite questions as to where they had wandered off to.

"Su... zaku...?"

At the nervous, hesitant call, Suzaku turns and sees Lelouch approaching him with wide eyes and careful but naturally graceful steps, prompting Suzaku ask, "Are you okay, Lelouch?"

The expression that appears on Lelouch's face is priceless, stuck somewhere between relief, anger, and utter, complete bafflement, completely overriding his nervousness. "Am _I_ alright?" he repeats almost angrily, "Are you seriously asking me that after you just take on _ten_ armed men singlehandedly? And _win_?!"

"Ah..." Suzaku smiles helplessly at him, enjoying the rare sight of Lelouch at a loss.

Lelouch sighs, covering his face with a hand, "Idiot. You haven't changed at all, have you? You can do _that_ and you are still the same idiot as ever." He gestures towards the pile of corpses, obviously unsure what to think.

Suzaku just grins at the exasperated not-insult, "I did apologize for the mess, you know. ...And I have actually. Changed that is." For one thing, he doesn't even particularly care that he just killed ten men in probably just as many seconds. He has become so inured to the killing that he merely spares a stray thought that his younger self would have been appalled. For Lelouch's life though, it is a paltry price.

...The only reason that he might feel bad about it would be if it was disturbing to Lelouch, but Lelouch has always had a fairly well developed stance on what should be done to those that attack him or his. These men were going to kill Lelouch? Then if Lelouch can kill them, or cause them to be killed, first then they have already sacrificed their lives to his retaliation and he will feel no remorse.

Suzaku glances toward the truck, vaguely remembering it exploding at some point, "Look, staying here is a bad idea. We need to get moving or else..." He grimaces, remembering the Shinjuku Massacre that had occurred on Clovis's orders. It would probably happen again too, since there is no longer a Royal Guard to check back in at HQ. It would probably take a little longer, without a definitive report that the capture of C.C. had gone wrong, but Suzaku had little doubt that the order would be given.

Suzaku doesn't regret it though, not even if it winds up costing him the Lancelot.

It wouldn't change much right now, but it _will_ spare Lelouch the trauma of thinking Suzaku has been mercilessly gunned down right in front of him, much less the trauma of the way he received his geass originally.

The first deaths at his hand...

He will protect him from the worst of it as best he can.

"Suzaku?" Lelouch waves a hand in front of Suzaku's face, "Are you still in there?"

Suzaku blinks. "Oh, um, yeah." He rubs his face. He can't afford to be spacing out at a moment like this. "Come on," he says, heading toward C.C. who seems to just be recovering, "Let's go before they decide to find out why the Royal Guard isn't responding."

"...Hey," a weak, strained sounding voice calls from the vicinity of the truck, speaking not in English, but the all but state-banned Japanese, "You can't leave just yet..."

Suzaku freezes. The terrorist in the truck is still alive?

Determined, his eyes narrow and he raises his stolen gun. That means there is a witness that might be able to identify Lelouch after he had so recklessly referred to him by title. "Stay back," he warns Lelouch as he approaches the vehicle. Stalking over to the cab of the truck, Suzaku opens the door and sees the bloodstained man slumped in the driver's seat.

Dying, Suzaku realizes, seeing his pallor combined with the sheer amount of blood inside the truck. Some of it has congealed, so it might not have been automatically fatal, if the man had gotten treatment rather than driving around Shinjuku Ghetto like a maniac, but he hadn't, because he is a terrorist on the run for the theft of "poison gas."

"So you _are_ Japanese," the man says, still in their shared birth language, with something like satisfaction in his glazed eyes, "thought so." He gives a faint chuckle, wincing half way through. "I'm going to die, kid," the man tells Suzaku, "So I want you to do something for me."

"I don't have time for this," Suzaku tells him apologetically, raising his gun. It would be a mercy, to finish him off rather than leave him behind to bleed to death, or the small chance of being found by imperial forces and treated, tortured for information on his cell, and _Lelouch_ and Suzaku's slip of tongue, and only _then_ executed.

"Heh," the man wheezes anyway, "dress me in that ugly thing you call a uniform and blow the truck."

Suzaku stops at that, "...Why?"

"They'll be looking for you won't they?" Blood drips down his chin, "Give 'em a body wearing that uniform and they aren't going to look any further." The man smirks at Suzaku, who is pretty sure he is wearing a dumbfounded expression.

" _Why?_ "

"I don't know you, but even an Honorary Brit can't be that bad if they're willing to kill off the Viceroy's Royal Guard because of one boy," suddenly the man goes slack and whispers, "even if it is only for the sake of a different prince."

"So you did hear," Suzaku says quietly.

The dying man smiles slightly, "Kid sounds like an okay guy... for a damn Brit."

"He is," Suzaku tells him, "and he hates Britannia and the Emperor enough to destroy them both."

Homicide, fratricide and sororicide, simultaneous patricide and matricide, genocide, suicide... none of these things were beyond Lelouch, he knows quite vividly, he just wants to make sure it doesn't come to that needlessly. Nor is there any question of Lelouch doing anything other than succeeding once he puts his mind to something. The fact that he had managed to cripple so many of Lelouch's plots still baffles him even now, but without Suzaku continuously tearing Lelouch's efforts to shreds, then their odds of success is even more assured. 

"Good," the man's eyes close as his whisper becomes even harder to hear, just a faint suggestion of a wheeze, "At least something on this damn mission went right." He gives a gurgling chuckle, "Fuck you Britannia. Nippon... Banzai..." Moments later, the liquid gurgle of his lungs as he struggles to breathe stops entirely.

When Suzaku checks for a pulse, he finds nothing. He sighs. "I guess you aren't that bad a guy either," he tells the dead man, "for a terrorist."

A scuff of dress shoes behind him makes him turn around and stare disappointedly at Lelouch, who, somewhat predictably Suzaku supposes, had not done as suggested. Lelouch did as he wished, like the royalty that makes up half his blood, compounded by the lavishness of the lifestyle he had lived in over half his lifetime. The more restrained but still rather decadent campus of Ashford Academy probably has done little to help matters. Lelouch's deep-seated need for _control_ is probably the exact reason that his geass manifested the way it had, the way his geass will manifest again once when C.C. gets her claws in him.

He can't afford to _not_ let Lelouch get his geass, no matter how much he would prefer to not let C.C. within ten feet of Lelouch.

"Are you done?" Lelouch asks in his slightly over-formal but still perfectly fluent Japanese.

Suzaku makes a face at him, at the oddity of hearing the voice of Zero coming out of Lelouch instead of the rarely used, serviceable, but purposefully awkwardly formed, almost pidgin Japanese he had gotten used to at Ashford. He knew that Lelouch-as-Zero was perfectly capable of speaking Japanese, but after Suzaku had learned that fact and betrayed him, Lelouch-as-Lelouch had never spoken so much as another word to him in the language of his birth, sticking entirely to Britannian English until the day Lelouch had died. "If you are going to be like that then why don't you help me with the body?" he replies back in the same language.

"You were the one saying we had to hurry," Lelouch reminds him, eyeing the puddles of blood with distaste. He doesn't move to help.

Typical.

"Yeah," Suzaku grunts, "until I got a perfectly good way to fake my death." He jabs the buckle release and unwinds it from around the, unfortunately nameless, man's body so he can extract it from the cab of the truck. After that, he spends a moment raiding the truck in search of a change of clothes, coming away with a set that is too large for him but still wearable.

"Is that really a good idea?" Lelouch asks, looking away as Suzaku strips the body, and then begins to strip himself, "Aren't you an Honorary Britannian for a good reason?" That the last part seem to more be hopefulness than belief just makes Suzaku feel worse about the situation.

"That purpose has already been fulfilled," he says, and it's not a lie, because it _was_ fulfilled. He just has a different purpose now, a different wish. Finishing dressing the corpse in his uniform, he carefully positions the gun so as to make the face unrecognizable only to realize that Lelouch is staring at him with disturbed fascination.

...Because he is kneeling on bloodied ground in just his boxers, fully ready to mutilate the body of a dead man without so much as a qualm. There is no use getting blood all over his change of clothes just yet.

Suzaku meets Lelouch's eyes for a moment before he does something as stupid as ask that he look away. That would just be insulting to the twelve year old boy he had known who hadn't flinched in the face of the bloodied fields of Japan following the aftermath of Britannia's assault. He turns back to the body and pulls the trigger, perfect execution style.

Lelouch lets out a slow breath, staring at the dead terrorist like it _is_ Suzaku. He shakes his head sharply and looks out over the fallen bodies of the Royal Guard for a moment, visibly swallowing. "What now, oh brilliant mastermind?" he asks sardonically, watching Suzaku throw on his baggy stolen clothing after wiping off the worst of the blood, though there is little help for the droplets that had landed in his hair and staining some of the strands red.

"You should take C.C. farther away so I can set the truck to detonate," Suzaku frowns at the recently roused immortal mistrustfully, "We need to get out of here quick after that, before Clovis does something drastic to try to create a cover up."

Lelouch stares it him for a long moment, evaluating him but the fact that he is being so blatant about it says a lot about the amount of trust Lelouch is putting in him. "Fine," he says a little snappily, "just be quick about it." He helps C.C. to her feet and mutters, "If you blow yourself up, so help me, Suzaku, I will kill you myself..."

"I will," Suzaku assures him as Lelouch ushers a silently judging C.C. back the way the truck had come. Once they are far enough away, he climbs back into the cab of the truck to look for the self-destruct mechanism. It takes probably all of five seconds to identify it. The only problem is the fact that it doesn't even have a timer. In fact, it's a fantastic way to accidentally blow himself up like Lelouch had said if he isn't careful.

Just wonderful.

Mental complaints made, Suzaku gets to work on making the explosives onboard do what _he_ wants them to do rather than act as the last-ditch suicide option that it was likely supposed to be. Luckily for Suzaku, he has had years to improve his improvisation skills and a lot of time was with engineers who made it their jobs to make things go boom in increasingly interesting ways.

A car bomb is both easier and more difficult in comparison out of its comparative simplicity.

Finishing up, Suzaku hops out of the truck so he can trigger the detonator without getting caught on anything on the way out.

He flicks the switch and he dashes away like Kallen is on his heels with malice aforethought.

One, two, three... his count makes it to five and he makes it half the distance to Lelouch when the explosion knocks him off his feet and sends him tumbling to the ground as dust and chunks of debris fill the tunnel.

A tad stunned from the violence of the explosion, it takes a moment for Suzaku to get his bearings. He kind of has to wonder if it had been as strong last time. Since it probably was, it is actually a surprise he survived the initial blast since he would have been a lot closer to it and already wounded. He shakes off the useless speculation and hurries over to where Lelouch is just uncovering his ears and coughing in the heavy dust in the air. By contrast, C.C. just covers her nose and mouth with the loose fabric of her sleeves with a slightly pinched expression of displeasure.

Putting little thought to it, Suzaku wraps his arm around Lelouch's waist to make sure that the hilariously out of shape teen wouldn't fall flat on his face if he happened to stumble over something but only grabs a bit C.C.'s sleeve, careful not to touch skin, to make sure they don't accidentally separated. He hurries them through the tunnels that make up the Underground as fast as Lelouch can manage.

It... isn't as fast a pace as Suzaku would prefer, but Lelouch is _trying_ , judging by how red faced and short of breath he is.

Pushing him any harder will probably just backfire, Suzaku knows with rueful acknowledgement of Lelouch's more... physical faults.

* * *

Clovis's anxious tension only ratchets higher when the time for his Guard to check in comes and goes with no word one way or the other about the capsule after it had been spotted by one of the Elevens they had sent into the ghetto. Fifteen minutes past time, Clovis is agitatedly rapping his gloved fingers against the arm of his chair.

"Where is my Guard?" he snaps out impatiently when he can no longer bear the waiting.

"We don't know, your highness," Bartley says nervously.

"What do you mean 'We don't know?'" Clovis demands, his regal accent twisting Bartley's few short words into something that sounds vulgar and accusing, "Have you even been _looking_ for them?" 

"Um..." one unfortunate soul stammers when Clovis's uncharitable gaze passes over him.

"Send someone to check their last location you idiots!" Clovis nearly roars before restraining himself. He holds a gloved hand to his chest and reminds himself of his image: genteel Clovis la Britannia does not _shout_. "Find out what is preventing them from reporting in," he says tightly with artificial calm.

The wait is torture while he waits for word when the group tasked with finding them reports in.

"We are at the coordinates 4-0-4 reported the poison gas to be at and it looks like there was an explosion here. Seems like it was a car bomb, the truck is nearly unrecognizable and..." there is the sound of convulsive swallowing, "I think I'm going to be sick..."

"Suck it up soldier!" Bartley barks over the line, "Report!"

"They're all dead," the soldier waveringly reports, voice thick, "I count... eleven bodies. None of them are... identifiable."

There is silence in the command center as the identities of who the dead likely are is obvious. With the lack of communication from Clovis's Royal Guard after they were last reported heading to that location it is almost certain that the bodies belong to them. There is one extra body so it either belongs to one of the terrorists they had been chasing, or the more likely option where the terrorist had blown up his vehicle to kill the Guard and 4-0-4.

A chill runs down Clovis's spine as dread causes a ball of lead to form in the pit of his stomach.

All of his Royal Guard? Dead?

This is catastrophic!

Bartley is not one to be distracted for long so, while Clovis tries to get his increased anxiety under control, he barks out another command, "What is the status of container the terrorists stole?"

"...It's open, sir," the soldier says nervously, "No sign of the poison gas."

That is even worse!

"Is there anything inside of it?" Bartley growls.

"No, sir," the soldier reports, over the muffled sound of his footsteps and the shifting of debris as he him moves about, "Actually, it look like there's a greenish slime of some sort in the bottom. ...Is it poisonous? Because there's a trail of it leading out of the truck..."

The very warranted concern on the soldier's end is met with uncaring disregard by his commanders. "Don't touch it and you'll be fine," Bartley tells the man condescendingly, not bothering to tell him that he would also be perfectly fine if he went swimming in the stuff. It isn't any business of a grunt's.

Further back from the direct control of the actions being undertaken to scour the ghetto for their prize, Clovis is... unhappy.

Actually, to call Clovis's emotional state "unhappy" is several magnitudes of unpleasantness off.

His Royal Guard has been slaughtered. The terrorists have made off with Code-R. His very position as Viceroy and maybe even prince is in peril.

He clenches his hand into a fist.

What to do... What to do...

Panic brings to mind one way of salvaging this fiasco.

Remove all the evidence.

That means... 

A purge.

Yes. Removing all potential witnesses is the only way to resolve this safely. Any of the Eleven trash in Shinjuku Ghetto might have seen the subject of Code-R, which makes them _all_ potential witnesses and potential dangers.

Clovis rubs his fingers in soothing circles against his temple, "The plan has moved to the next phase."

Bartley, jerks around, surprised, "But your highness...!"

"If knowledge of her gets out, I will be disinherited," Clovis reminds the general tightly, "Shinjuku needs a bit of urban renewal, I believe. It is an eyesore that deeply offends my artistic spirit. That the trash here objected to it enough to murder the fine members of my Royal Guard will merely make it more fitting when I devote it to their loyal service in spite of the barbarians we suffer in ruling over."

Bartley visibly realizes what Chris is going to say next. He smiles with vicious anticipation, "I completely agree, your highness. Something appropriate should be done to fix this."

* * *

After several long minutes, they finally reach an access point that hasn't been sealed off for one reason or another or likely to just lead them deeper into the maze of the Underground. Unfortunately, by the time they get there, there is a squad of Britannian soldiers between where the tunnel had come out and the more open streets of the ghetto. Horrifyingly, this time Suzaku gets to hear the order that he had missed receiving the first time over the soldiers' radios.

"As Clovis, Third Prince of the empire, I command you: Destroy Shinjuku Ghetto! Leave no one alive!"

Clovis's order came and the troops reaction is rather tepid. They grumble about the extra work they'll have to do but they unhesitatingly turn their guns toward the uncomprehending, unsuspecting civilians around them. They pull their triggers and blood flows. There is no sign of remorse whatsoever.

Suzaku chokes down a cry of protest as even the children are being gunned down and he has to stop himself from leaping out of cover to take them out. That would leave Lelouch unprotected and he simply can't do that so he grits his teeth and tries to block out the cries of the dead and dying. It's too late to help them.

The last victim, a little girl, screams before her cries are silenced by another burst of gunfire. Lelouch flinches and the grip on Suzaku's arm tightens, nails gouging into his skin. Lelouch is shivering slightly but his eyes go hard, "Suzaku... you can take them... can't you?"

"Of course," he says immediately, before quickly tacking on a protesting, "but then you'll be defenseless!"

"I don't care," Lelouch's eyes are as hard as the amethysts they resemble as he hisses the pitiless command, " _Kill them!_ "

Suzaku swallows his objections upon seeing the steely resolve of Lelouch's leashed rage rattling its shackles. He can see Zero there, just underneath the surface, clawing its way to the top. This is the heartbeat of the real Zero, the person behind the masks who appears when the blood of the innocent flows, not the symbol that Lelouch thought he had shaped Zero into to pass ever onwards into the future. "Yes... your highness." Suzaku just barely remembers to use the princely address rather than the imperial one he'd had months to get used to. He ignores the startled look Lelouch gives him at the courtly reply and lunges forward.

The first three go down with muffled groans and cracking bones before any of them even realize that they are under attack. The next is trying to bring his rifle to bear when Suzaku breaks his arm, gaining a scream, then smashes his fist straight into the man's unprotected neck, crushing the soldier's windpipe and ending any noises the soldier might have made. Dropping number four, Suzaku leaps toward number five, spinning through the air until the heel of his foot smashes against the side of the soldier's neck, snapping it from the force of the blow at just the right angle. This leaves Suzaku facing three soldiers, each of them armed with standard issue rifles and pistols, all aimed directly at him.

They fire... but Suzaku isn't there anymore to _be_ hit.

Suzaku whirls, low to the ground, and kicks the feet out from under number six, grabs number seven by the wrist and flips the soldier over his shoulder and down on top of six, and tackles number eight with a brutal shoulder lock, simultaneously breaking the forearm and dislocating the shoulder with a gruesome _crunch_. He snatches up eight's rifle when the rifle strap snaps from the violent forces he exerted upon its owner.

Just as six and seven are staggering to their feet and shooting at him, Suzaku takes his borrowed gun and puts a bullet between the eyes of both of them even as he dances away from them. He scans each of the bodies, making sure they are all dead. Somehow, number four, as he finds out, is somehow still alive, though just barely from the shallowness and ragged quality of his breathing and not for long. Rather than allow four to slowly suffocate to death, Suzaku speeds him on his way with the last of his limited bullets. He spends another moment checking the other victims of his hand-to-hand skills for pulses to make sure that they aren't in the same sorry situation as number four.

None of them are, so he turns back to check on number eight... only to see the man is no longer where Suzaku had dropped him in a heap in order to avoid being shot at.

Suzaku's blood runs cold and he immediately casts about for the missing enemy soldier and finds him... too late.

C.C. cries out a desperate "He mustn't die!" before another gunshot rings in Suzaku's ears.

"Bitch!" number eight curses. He fumblingly cocks his backup pistol again with his single working hand as C.C. collapses to the ground, bleeding profusely from her perforated skull.

Suzaku feels the world itself drop away from him as he lunges for the shooter. Lelouch's face, stained with bits and pieces of C.C.'s brains and spattered with her blood, burns into Suzaku's memory as the prince stares down the soldier with an expression that blends together primal terror, unending horror, and boundless rage.

It is singularly the most unfitting expression Suzaku has ever seen cross Lelouch's face.

It's too little, too late, for Suzaku to stop the man. He is simply too far away to change anything.

Luckily for all three of them, there _is_ someone who can do something about this situation.

C.C.'s hand wraps around Lelouch's ankle and in an instant, all the depths of roiling emotion that had been shining from Lelouch drains away to impassivity.

In the blink of an eye, Lelouch has changed his entire carriage and Suzaku can see the glow of a familiar, malevolent red. The geass symbol flares to life in all of its horrific, mind-bending, will- subjugating, glory. He meets the unsuspecting gaze of his would-be killer and says just one single dispassionate word.

"Die."

* * *

Lelouch is dead.

This is an immutable fact.

He knows it to be true, has, in fact, planned for it exhaustively.

So, when he finds himself staring up at "God" in the World of C he is unpleasantly surprised.

To say that he has a _problem_ with the fact that rather than being subsumed into a part of the enormous mass that is the collective consciousness of humanity as he had been expecting, not even _it_ will take him, is an understatement.

Lelouch doesn't even have the luxury of time to rail against this unexpected occurrence before everything begins... changing.

In fact, he has only the span of a few seconds to try to reconcile his death and continued existence before the thin air of the World of C becomes oppressively thick and a massive pressure forces him to his knees, and then his hands, panting as he tries to breathe. He is forced to watch, unable to so much as move a pinkie, while the broken bits of the Sword of Akasha quickly begin to reconstitute themselves out of nothingness and "God" itself glows the red of an active geass as it shifts and alters in what seems like fast forward. Nearly as soon as it starts, the changes come to an abrupt and violent, world-shaking, teeth-grinding halt when the red glow fades.

The air thins again and the overbearing pressure eases, leaving Lelouch stunned and rather shell- shocked by the sudden and alarming changed of events.

Moments later, "God" glows red again, but this time the Sword of Akasha merely begins to shatter into pieces all over again, just as it had when he had first given the command to not stop the march of time.

_What_ is going on here?

Lelouch has there terrible feeling that something has gone horribly awry, something Lelouch has no plan for... Something he had no idea that he _needed_ to plan for.

Lelouch has no idea what might be happening to C's World, until a very familiar, and _very unwelcome_ voice cries out in horror from somewhere else in the bizarre not-quite-physical plane Lelouch is in.

"No! The Ragnarök Connection! What is happening to it?!"

Lelouch's eyes narrow to hateful slits.

I see...

_Charles zi Britannia..._

Of course.

So _that_ is what this is...

The World of C hadn't been moving in fast forward, but _reverse_.

Somehow, despite the commanding request he had given the collective consciousness, a geass has somehow turned time back upon itself, restoring even those that have died back to a prior version, somehow passing Lelouch by as it happens.

Why the World of C hasn't destroyed the man again as it had the Sword of Akasha is a question for another time because Lelouch's connection to the World of C draws tight in an unpleasant sensation on par with the one that had occurred during the reversion as he feels the familiar presence of C.C. After a few instants of confusion and a feeling of two forces sliding past each other without finding purchase, like matching magnetic poles repelling each other, his connection snaps like an overstretched rubber band and assails him with memories of a time he had left in the past where they belonged.

The sense of overwhelming fear and imminent peril of the newest memories roughly and messily smash into each other, turning everything but the need to _survive_ into a jumble of memory of things that he knows have already happened and those that he knows have not yet occurred, with each perspective being a perfectly valid one.

A few handfuls of time, the difference between one Lelouch and the next at the other where their memories conflict, allows the life-or-death importance of the situation felt by part of him to override the overarching apathy felt by the burnt-out other half. This allows him to open his eyes to the physical reality around him and forces him to _see_ the threat of the soldier standing in front of him and take care of it with all the ease of breathing.

Lelouch's command takes effortless hold of the Britannian soldier and the disoriented once-emperor can see the rings forming around the man's eyes as he immediately stops from shooting Lelouch. His face turns that familiar slack happiness at being given such an immediately... _executable_ order. Suzaku's final target shifts the aim of his pistol and puts it to the side of his head and with a cheerful "Yes sir!", the man pulls the trigger and unhesitatingly blows his brains out, just like he had done to C.C.

The body collapses to the ground like the puppet Lelouch had made him into, strings cut, and bleeding out on the ground like C.C. only, unlike the immortal witch, the man isn't going to be getting up again any time soon, or at all.

That little near-disaster taken care of, Lelouch turns his gaze toward Suzaku, looking at the one variable that he _knows_ is completely out of place, according to the memories of the Lelouch that knows better, rather than the one blinded by relief to have a friend and backup in this horrific mess.

Suzaku pales noticeable under his tan when their eyes meet and any doubt as to if Suzaku knows what is going on vanishes.

I spy, with my little eye: a fake.

Lelouch's lip curls for a moment before he schools his expression back to the blank wall impression he has perfected. He is the ice that forms a shear glacial wall, unclimbable because there is no foothold for anyone to find purchase.

That geass again...

It has to be.

It is the only explanation that makes any sense, even if that doesn't answer the question of "Why Suzaku?" if even the man who called, or rather _calls_ , himself Lelouch's father seemingly has no idea what has happened if his shock about the collapse of the Sword of Akasha was any indication. Lelouch can pass off being unaffected by the fact that he was dead and not part of the Collective, but Suzaku doesn't have a geass ability and isn't immortal, not that either of those things seem to have an effect on remembrance, because C.C. doesn't remember anything

The real question is whose geass could have such an absurdly powerful and widespread effect as to cause... all of _this_. Who could turn back the hands of time so completely and flawlessly so to have even the world physically rearranged?

It can't have been one of C.C.'s. She would have told him if she had any other contractors, after Mao, and then... _Marianne_.

V.V. then?

Charles wouldn't have had the time to grant anyone a geass before Lelouch had let the World of C finish dissolving him at the end of their little "chat" and he hadn't thought that V.V. had ever had a contractor anywhere near this powerful. The childish looking immortal's cursed gifts seemed to lean toward the generic and mass produced in all but a few cases.

Rolo or Bismarck were two prime examples of the latter.

It _is_ always possible that one of the Geass Order had survived the massacre he had ordered and the fact that the strong geasses both held domain over aspects of time also help make it an even better fit.

Such a powerful ability...

Of course V.V. would keep such a person in a different location than all of his other assets.

"Kururugi," Lelouch eventually greets the out of place teen impassively. Though he remembers two different sequences of events, it is Suzaku that has been causing all the changes that have been happening in the first place. The scenario has changed, and even if Lelouch is uncertain as to what _exactly_ is going on here, it is obvious that the boy in front of him is _not_ the Kururugi Suzaku he should have been at this point in time.

Suzaku swallows faintly before his expression of frantic worry freezes over for a few seconds before realization turns it detached and disappointed. "Your Majesty," is Suzaku's equally cool and formal reply.

Despite expecting the confirmation, Lelouch wishes he hadn't been correct. Lelouch can feel his own expression becoming ever so slightly wry, despite feeling a pang of loss at the return to status quo after experiencing the too-vivid recent memories of the other-Lelouch who had not been forced to watch Suzaku shot and spend several days grieving his "death".

"I do not think that that particular form of address is appropriate here," he finds himself saying, "Not here, and not now." It comes out softer than he was intending, maybe because he has dared to say these words to Suzaku in Japanese, maybe because despite Suzaku's front of neutrality, the naked, unconcealable hatred that has lurked in his eyes since Euphemia seems to have inexplicably veiled itself under a front of serenity that Lelouch can't pierce despite standing right in front of him.

Even if the gentleness is fake, it lets him be gentler in turn, so muddled by the mess of his memories.

Euphemia...

Will Suzaku somehow find a way return to her?

Will he find some way to become her knight again, despite the changes he has made?

He is _her_ knight first and foremost after all.

Lelouch has only ever been the subpar replacement for his shining princess, Suzaku's tool to accomplish his Lady's dreams and the object of his vengeance for the way her life was cut so short at Lelouch's own hands.

Thinking Suzaku will stay with him is idiotic and his greediness for Suzaku's positive attention should just go shut up already.

"It's Lelouch," tumbles out of his mouth, because the childish hopes in his heart — the ones he has spent so much time attempting to smother — have been shocked back to life by the abrupt rearranging of the world, and his heart yearns for the return of the untainted friendship of their earlier days, "Lelouch Lamperouge is hardly nobility, much less royalty." They are stupid, meaningless words and he knows it the moment he says them. He doesn't know why he says them, because there is no Lelouch Lamperouge without Lelouch vi Britannia, the monster that should be _dead_.

He can only put it down to the disorientation of attempting to reconcile the memories of his death and the memories leading up to it with the memory of the changed Shinjuku scenario.

Suzaku being so fiercely protective and the naïve feelings and the pure trust and relieved belief his different younger self had felt and invested in Suzaku in the moments right before he woke up to this changed reality with his Knight of Zero _right there_ , protecting his life with all the ferocity that had earned Suzaku the nom de guerre of "The White Death" even though Lelouch can vividly remember that Suzaku has also just done the opposite by driving a sword through him and taking his life.

...Or maybe Suzaku had thought that the younger him was somehow "innocent" at this point in time?

It wasn't true, even back then, but Suzaku can hardly be expected to know that.

Suzaku seems to brighten ever so slightly at Lelouch's words. He smiles and the expression just barely reflects in his eyes, just as unsure of taking the offer as Lelouch feels after having made it. Then he steps forward and before Lelouch can realize what Suzaku is intending to do, claps his hand down on Lelouch's shoulder. "Tha—"

Unable to help himself, Lelouch flinches out from under Suzaku's touch and steps away, putting greater distance between them. Lelouch stamps down on the flesh of panic and reigns in the shivers to near invisible tremors in just his fingers to appear his usual coolly collected self. He is not going to let Suzaku know that he is rattled.

Suzaku's mouth is open in a surprised "o". Suzaku's face darkens in a way that makes the tremors worsen until Lelouch forces the nerves down. Moments later, the neutrality Lelouch is more familiar with slides down and returns the two of them to the more familiar status quo of two normally hostile forces glaring at each other from behind their walls and separated by the tenuous peace of their truce.

The truce, Zero Requiem, has ended though, so...

The real question is why Suzaku hasn't taken that gun he's holding and put it to Lelouch's head since realizing that Lelouch is no longer the boy he protected from the Royal Guard and led through the Underground maze but the man who remembers _everything_.

Lelouch is _guilty_ , so why is Suzaku looking at him like that?

He cannot make sense of it.

"Why...?" Lelouch murmurs, seeing the sorrow and shame in Suzaku's forest green eyes, a match for his own self-loathing which makes no sense, because Suzaku is the one in the right between the two of them, "Why have you not killed me yet?"

Before Suzaku can reply, the sound of a cellphone ringing shrilly makes its piercincly loud and obtrusive entrance in the emptiness of the bloodied warehouse and Lelouch pulls the incongruous device out of his pocket to stare at it blankly.

Shirley Fenette.

The name that appears on the screen when he looks at it is a shock.

It continues to ring and Lelouch can only remember ordering her to live, _pleading_ for her to live, as she bleeds out. Already fatally wounded, there had been no opening for the geass to take and she had died, physically unable to do be he wished of her. Lelouch swallows thickly, thumb poised hesitatingly over the "accept call" button, before he closes his eyes and firmly presses the button to reject it.

The shaking returns and this time, Lelouch can't muffle their presence. He breathes in a shuddering breath and lets it out.

He can't talk to her right now.

If he does that might utterly paralyze him.

He can't afford that.

Shirley is alive...

He can... talk to her, later.

"Lelouch?"

Lelouch doesn't look at Suzaku, already hating that deceptive concern he can hear. Lelouch doesn't want Suzaku to pretend concern for him.

While Suzaku might have had enough tolerance for Lelouch to spare him a few seconds of compassion enough to deign to hold his hand as he was dying, he doesn't want Suzaku _acting_ as though everything is _fine_.

It _is not_.

Lelouch is alive. The Zero Requiem has been erased. _That bastard_ , Lelouch's imperial predecessor is alive again. The Areas still exist... and Suzaku remembers. Everything.

It isn't fair that everything and everyone has probably been reset, except for the one person that Lelouch would have preferred to not remember.

There is no way to rebuild the bridges they have both burned between them.

Because Suzaku hates him.

* * *

When Lelouch just grips his cellphone tighter and tighter until his knuckles turn white, Suzaku doesn't know what to do to draw him out of his stupor since he'd already had such a negative reaction to being touched by Suzaku.

Suzaku probably should have expected that.

The last time he had touched Lelouch willingly, for any reason besides to raise his hand to harm or to punish, had been... To his shame, Suzaku struggles to recall when it might have been. The only ones that come to mind are the moments when Lelouch had been the distorted student-Lelouch and that doesn't count.

His mind is drawn back to the days they had spent together in Ashford, before he had known that Lelouch and Zero were one in the same and Lelouch hadn't known that he was the pilot of the Lancelot.

Even then hadn't been very close. Lelouch had been far too wary of Suzaku's position in the Britannian military, no matter in what capacity, to attempt to reach out to Suzaku, and Suzaku...

Suzaku had been far too preoccupied with "protecting" Lelouch from the possible backlash from associating with an "Eleven" despite his status as an Honorary Britannian. Between that and the classified status of his work with A.S.E.E.C. and the way he had known Lelouch world disapprove of it, even without knowing that Lelouch moonlighted as a terrorist leader, _the_ terrorist leader much less...

Then...

Euphemia...

Suzaku shies away from that ingrained, bitter and painful train of thought before he can upset himself more.

If this really is reality then Euphemia is alive out there: alive and well and happily, naïvely, idealistically pacifistic, just the way he preferred to remember her, rather than...

Suzaku cuts himself short again, walling away the memories even if shades of red still seep through the cracks.

He is _not_ going to think about that.

It is a bittersweet thought, but it is one that allows him to close the distance between him and his emperor once more, resolved to _keep_ reaching out until the day comes that he finds Lelouch reaching back.

Suzaku calls Lelouch's name again, trying to regain his attention. Suzaku makes himself wait long enough for Lelouch to look up and when he reaches out this time he makes sure to keep the touch lighter and gentler, even if he isn't much good with being gentle with people these days.

He doesn't want startle Lelouch like that so soon again.

* * *

"Lelouch..." Suzaku's neutral mask cracks — Lelouch doesn't want to see behind it, he doesn't want to see the horrible truth he knows is there — and he steps closer to Lelouch raising his hand, but Lelouch can't help but flinch again in the expectancy of pain even though he tells himself that Suzaku is entitled to mete it out since Lelouch had managed to screw up _this_ attempt at making amends. Suzaku freezes, hand hanging in mid air as he stares at Lelouch. The cracks in the mask grow as Suzaku finishes his movement and places his hand right at the base of Lelouch's neck, curling his fingers around the back and tangling his fingers in the black strands. His thumb begins stroking up and down the side of Lelouch's thin neck and Lelouch can feel the quickened pulse of his heartbeat in his throat, under the light pressure as his focus shrinks down to that small stretch of skin.

All the while Lelouch winds himself tighter than a piano wire from the expectation that the killer that holds Lelouch's life in his hands will tighten his grip and throttle him until Lelouch dies, again, but from asphyxiation rather than stabbing. Or maybe he will go the route of cutting off the flow of blood to his brain and cripple or kill him that way. It will probably depend on how cruel he is feeling at the moment. Perhaps he will simply snap Lelouch's neck to end it quickly with those strong hands of his. They are certainly more than capable of doing so.

The lack of follow through, on any of those paths, is almost worse.

Suzaku sighs and the hand withdraws. A tired smile appears, ugly and broken where it had once been a kindly and gentle beam of sunshine. Lelouch misses Suzaku's smiles most of all. "Don't you have a battle to win?" the Knight of Zero asks instead, with forced levity.

A battle?

He doesn't think so.

He has fought all of his battles already.

He is _done_ fighting.

He is done _period_.

Lelouch just stares blankly at Suzaku, not blinking.

The smile made up of broken, sharp-edged glass falls and Lelouch is glad, because Suzaku is no liar, not like Lelouch — who can make a lie so genuine that even he himself can believe it — who can tell that Suzaku's mockery of a smile is just hurting him.

False tears hurt those around you.

False smiles hurt oneself.

C.C. is the one who had said those words and it just goes to show that if even someone who is such a devoted student of divorcing oneself from the human condition and the connections that come with it believes it then she probably has something there.

"Please?" Suzaku asks.

"Why?" Lelouch asks flatly.

"Because people are dying out there!" Distress and desperation, at what, Lelouch can't guess, etches lines of worry and tension around Suzaku's eyes. "Innocents! Children! You can save them! You already have once! Isn't that what Zero is supposed to do?!"

Zero.

Lelouch's face twists into a snarl as Suzaku just can't resist twisting the knife, or rather _sword_ , he had run Lelouch through with, anger piercing the blankness. " _I_ , am not Zero. _You_ are Zero now, remember?!" What does Suzaku _want_ from him?!

Oddly, Suzaku only seems slightly pleased at Lelouch's snappish retorts and some of the desperation eases out of the tense lines of his body. He pokes Lelouch lightly in the chest, prompting a ripple of remembered pain, and makes Lelouch twitch back, away from the touch, "It this is what it seems like then Zero doesn't exist here. _Yet._ Remember? If there is no one to create the legend of Zero, then there is no way for me to take it from you."

"You could do it..." Lelouch says without force.

Only...

"You know I can't, Lelouch," Suzaku says in a kind voice as he speaks those horrible, mercilessly cruel words, "I'm not _you_. I don't have your skills in leadership, nor even a fraction of your charisma. If I tried... the Black Knights I would create would be _nothing_ in comparison to the real thing."

Lelouch staggers back, reeling more from the words than the shadow of remembered pain.

Oh.

_Oh!_

That...

How did he miss that?

Something must be really wrong with him for him to not realize, to not even think about...

Zero doesn't exist yet.

This is _Shinjuku Ghetto_.

In the middle of a purge.

Of _course_ Zero doesn't exist yet.

"Shinjuku Ghetto..." Lelouch finds himself narrowing his eyes speculatively.

It is almost funny how a few simple words rearrange the world around him so completely, yet again leaving him feeling as though he is standing on a treacherous precipice, about to fall into nothingness. There are things that he is _purposefully_ not thinking about now, because if he did, he would succumb to a frothing rage and at the moment he just doesn't have the _time_ to indulge in such a useless display of petulant emotion if he want to save as many of the people living in the Shinjuku Ghetto as he can.

Suzaku is here though, and Lelouch is as sure — at least as sure as he can be about _anything_ involving Suzaku — that Suzaku will not let that happen, will not let him fall, because the only one Suzaku will let kill him is Suzaku himself. And right now, Suzaku seems to want to keep him alive for some strange reason.

The fog that has been slowing and preoccupying him so completely since the world had so abruptly restarted begins to clear as events begin falling into place in his thoughts. His mind, made and trained for strategic planning automatically, starts working to twist what he knows with what has changed to his advantage, because that is what he _does_ , no matter how horrifying a path it might take him down.

Things are already different than he remembers, but new objectives are already formed in his mind, many of them for far in the future that don't have any immediate applications to the situation he is in at the moment. As for the much simpler, short term ones...

He just needs to clear them.

First, they are going to need a knightmare, since his younger other-self had maintained the sense to keep the stolen radio he had grabbed from the truck despite the Suzaku induced stupidity he had been struck with.

A moment later, he winces.

_A_ knightmare.

Singular.

Oh, this is going to be just _lovely_.

Lelouch is very much _not_ looking forward to spending an indeterminate amount of time cozied up with _anyone_ in a cockpit as cramped as the Southerland's. The fact that it is going to be _Suzaku_ he will be doing this with is as much a pro as it is a con when taking into account Suzaku's skill and weighing against it the fact that _Suzaku hates him_.

Lelouch considers getting the both of them out of the warehouse and hunting down a knightmare to demand "protection" to sucker the device into a more advantageous position but nixes it in favor of waiting when the odds of success that someone, possibly Villetta herself, would show up at the logical exit point for the "terrorists" to escape from the Underground combined with the patrol going dark far outweigh the odds of stumbling around and hoping not to get shot in the middle of a purge-in-progress.

From there, Lelouch knows that he needs to have more information about the situation than he currently has to effectively decide which of his fledgling plans would have the greatest effect because he has no idea how the premature deaths of the Royal Guard will have on Clovis's handling of the situation.

Last time, if he remembers correctly, the purge had been going on for some time before he had come to this same spot. His time-sense is useless though, since even if things had happened the same he wouldn't be able to tell since he can't remember the actual times each of the events happened.


	3. Chapter 2: The White Death Dances

In the temporary lull, Lelouch takes the time to plot, giving his prey the opportunity to unwarily wander into his open and waiting maw rather than having to do the opposite and put himself in a disadvantageous position while seeking it out. He is peripherally aware of Suzaku prowling around the warehouse, looking for more Britannian soldiers and checking for any survivors among the fallen Japanese despite the low chance of a life having been somehow spared by chance and a misfortunate type of luck. There is something just odd about Suzaku not wearing his flight suit or knight's mantle, or even the flashy, gold-trimmed outfit he should have been wearing as Zero.

As if on cue, and despite all the changes that have occurred, a knightmare tears into the building and Lelouch can spot the moment when the pilot spots all the dead soldiers. To Lelouch's deliciously ironic pleasure, he hears the regrettably familiar and irritatingly strident tones of one Villetta Nu demanding they identify themselves, punctuated by bullets aimed _around_ them rather than directly at them.

Lelouch summons up all the feigned noble terrified indignation he can muster to push this woman's buttons. "How dare you speak like that to your betters?!" he blusters convincingly, making sure to widen his eyes with pretend wildness and panic, tilting his face to show off the blood spattering him to great effect. "I am my father's, _Duke Spacer's,_ heir and I will make sure he hears of this insolence!" he bleats like the good, snobbish, _terrified_ little sheep he is pretending to be. "I order you to protect me since this worthless Eleven servant of mine is pathetic! If you do, I'll be sure to have you rewarded!"

In the seconds that pass, Lelouch has little trouble guessing the path that Villetta Nu's thoughts are taking, being the scheming, opportunistic ladder-climber that she is.

Noble heir.

Purist leaning.

In trouble.

For her, each of these elements would add up to one thing: opportunity.

Suzaku on the other hand, blood-stained, wide-eyed, baby-faced, "worthless _Eleven_ ", Suzaku... doesn't even register.

The smile that he doesn't let show on his face grows fangs.

Sure enough, the baited hook Lelouch has dangled in front of her gets a bite and the cockpit opens. The woman herself descends from it while holding them both at gunpoint. "Show me your identification, _Younger Duke Spacer_ ," she says suspiciously, "We can't have just any rabble running around pretending to be nobility. If you're lying..."

On what is supposed to be an ominous note but is instead more amusing than anything else -- since he is a once-and-never demon emperor who is pretending to be an exiled prince who is pretending to be one of the "rabble" Nu so disdains while pretending to be the consummate, charismatic terrorist leader who is temporarily pretending to be a noble's bratty son -- her last few steps have brought her perilously close to Suzaku and right where Lelouch wants her.

Rather than waste his geass on a proven source of trouble when he has a more readily available and more importantly, _reusable_ resource at hand, Lelouch makes an inconspicuous motion right out of their childhood sign language, giving Suzaku the order to attack, albeit non-lethally, and the knight does.

In a lightning fast move that Lelouch has trouble catching, even though he is expecting it, Nu goes from threatening him, to joining the soldiers on the floor with just one minor difference: she is still alive.

Lelouch drops his façade immediately. His wide eyes relax to a more normal position and the panicked expression is wiped clean to make room for the heaping pile of disdain he feels toward the woman lying in a crumpled heap at his feet.

"Take her key," he orders flatly, pushing aside the itching temptation to just kill her anyway for all the trouble she caused him and for all the trouble she is certain to cause him again. Well, he is actually tempted to kill her or enslave her, but Suzaku is pretty much guaranteed to object to the latter and if he plays his hand right she might instead be a useful tool instead of a supremely tenacious thorn in his side, _repeatedly_ and thoroughly enough to truly vex him.

Disgusted, he tries to wipe his face with his sleeve, attempting to get the worst of the blood spatter off even if he is probably only smearing the half-dried and sticky streaks in his efforts. The feeling of it slowly trickling down his cheek and the side of his face is making his skin crawl and congealing there. He feels _unclean_.

Suzaku unhooks the plain looking Activation Key from around Villetta's wrist and tosses it to Lelouch. After Lelouch catches it, he dangles it by its wrist-strap between his thumb and forefinger, giving it a disdainful look. Last time he had gotten this thing, he had been chased around Shinjuku and been almost captured by the Lancelot, by Suzaku, only saved by chance and the fortuitous intervention of Suzaku's idealistic pacifism pushing aside the relentlessness of his pursuit. After Suzaku had succeeded in destroying all the resistance's stolen knightmares with contemptuous ease, Lelouch had been truly fortunate to get away that time, allowed more by chance than any plan of his.

Suzaku blinks up at Lelouch with an open expression and a head tilt that makes Lelouch think, ridiculously, of overly curious kittens, bloodstains or no, but the Japanese teen just has one of those kinds of faces. Lelouch simply gives a small huff in response to the wordless question. "Secure her," he tells Suzaku exasperatedly, "One of us is going to have to come back for her later, after the objectives are complete."

He spares a glance toward the still dead C.C., momentarily debating if he should figure out a way to take her with them when they head out or just leave her be and let her find her way to him like she had the first time. The mental debate takes a bare second before he decides that the possible detrimental effect that dragging her corpse along with them would have on Lelouch's own survival is unacceptable when the witch will be perfectly fine no matter what he does.

That decided, he skirts around the pools of blood and sweeps toward the likely brand new yet obsolete looking knightmare so he can access the cockpit. Foot in the stirrup of the cockpit's tow line he turns back toward Suzaku, "You are the knightmare ace here, Suzaku, so be quick about it. You are going to be piloting this piece of junk, at least until I get you your Lancelot back." Ignoring the startled look Suzaku gives him, he tugs the line so it starts reeling itself back up and taking him with it.

He forces himself to ignore the throbbing ache of his arm where Suzaku had kicked him at the initial jolt and the way he can feel the heat of the bruises forming a familiar macabre necklace around his throat, just under the upper edge of the high collar of his school uniform. If he ignores them, then Suzaku will keep thinking that nothing he does to Lelouch actually has any effect and therefore not think to leverage his more powerful physicality against Lelouch.

Cynically, Lelouch wonders if Suzaku had been "awake" when he had done it and if he had thought that Lelouch had been as well. Lelouch figures that it doesn't really matter either way, because it isn't like there is anything that Lelouch can do to physically stop Suzaku from doing whatever he wants if he _does_ attempt it.

It is not that he is _lazy_ so much as out of practice. All Lelouch really needs access to for this operation are the knightmare's tactical screens. Inadequate as they might be when compared to the strengths of the Druid System, they are still, grudgingly, acceptable for his current objectives.

Gawain and Shinkiro really have spoiled him for old, mass produced _, junk_ knightmares.

Lelouch absently hits the switch to send the tow line back down and seats himself in front of the spread of dormant viewscreens. Flipping the knightmare key around his fingers, he fits it into the slot and the machine rumbles sleepily to life just enough to demand a password. Lelouch smirks.

A tiny bit of convincing later, using a vulnerability that hadn't yet been discovered in the knightmare's operating system at this point in time, the knightmare is unlocked and the interfaces are tweaked to fit his needs yet not interfere with the operation of the Southerland by Suzaku. This time he is not going to be a sitting duck, utterly preoccupied with his utterly green attempts at commanding the field battle, so he is going to take full advantage of that difference and capture the enemy's white knight if it appears on the battlefield despite losing Suzaku as its pilot.

The odds are excellent that if it does deploy, the pilot will be nowhere near as skilled as Suzaku.

If that _is_ the case, capture of the Lancelot will be an important objective, because he will probably never get a better chance than a first deployment where the frame will not have weapons to increase its lethality. The distinct lines and coloration of the white prototype knightmare is an important and exploitable part of Suzaku's battlefield presence, making him as readily and ominously identifiable as Kallen's gleaming red Guren.

Soon after Lelouch gets everything set, there is the whirr of the tow line and Suzaku is perched on the edge of the knightmare holding out a damp cloth. Lelouch looks up at him and gives a wry smile. "Thank you."

Suzaku shrugs uncomfortably, leaning against the side of the seat while Lelouch takes the cloth and zealously attacks the itchy, drying blood that is starting to encrust itself on his skin.

He wants it off, off, _off_.

After making sure to get as much of the blood off as is physically possible with just a single piece of cloth that has already been stained reddish brown, Lelouch makes one final pass and decides that he's as good as he's going to get until he can actually properly bathe.

With a sigh of almost-relief at the slight increase in cleanliness, he hunts for a place to deposit the soiled rag, but before he can do anything, Suzaku plucks it out of his hands and tosses it outside, ignoring his disgusted expression despite the fact that it _is_ the easiest solution of what to do with it.

"Am I sitting on your lap, or are you sitting on mine?" He waves a hand vaguely, indicating the rather cramped cockpit they will be sharing momentarily.

Suzaku's face scrunches slightly with displeasure. "I'll be on top," he says, before turning the tiniest bit pink and quickly turning to stare at the screens. He intently studies the changes Lelouch has made to the layouts, before making a few changes of his own.

Lelouch gives Suzaku a weird look for the odd reaction, "You _are_ the pilot here. I will be somewhat occupied with commanding." Though how _engaged_ he will be by Clovis's dull-witted tactics after facing off against the greatest minds the world can offer is up in the air.

He fully expects to be bored out of his skull.

Lelouch adjusts the seat back so there is more room for them both and Suzaku awkwardly clambers over him and seats himself on Lelouch's lap. Lelouch grimaces. Suzaku is _heavy_ , and it's all muscle, and in his lap. Crushing him.

Oh yes. This is going to be an absolute _riot_ , he can tell already.

Lelouch firmly keeps his mouth shut and his face neutral as Suzaku adjusts the controls for their new positions.

When they finally get moving, Lelouch notices something interesting. "Hmmm?" He reaches out and taps a series of buttons around Suzaku's obstruction to pull up a better view of the field. Somehow, Lelouch realizes, despite the detours, he has actually left the Underground sooner than he had the first time, even though it feels as though he should have missed the entire battle. Obviously, his sense of time is skewed by the unexpected events of the day. Either that or the command to begin the purge coming later had changed things. Likely both. He mentally ticks off the potential possibilities that would alter the timing of events so fortuitously.

"Problem your majesty?" Suzaku asks tersely, eyes flicking about the screens, trying to spot whatever it was that had supposedly caught his attention.

"It is nothing to worry about," Lelouch assures him, quickly returning the displays to the way they'd had them when they'd started out. "I was simply noting that everything happened faster than before," he assures the knightmare ace who acknowledges the explanation with a short nod. Reorienting himself, he directs Suzaku toward the west entrance of the ghetto and the buildings by the track where he had initially ambushed Kallen's pursuers.

Suzaku nods and settles into his usual calm but alert state as he maneuvers their shared knightmare toward its destination through the bullet-torn ghetto in the process of being torn down by the merciless forces of the Third Prince.

Lelouch eyeballs the IFF display, watching the sole red-marked unit dart and weave on the screen as four stubborn knightmares continually harass the outnumbered and technically outclassed Glasgow.

He spares a moment to appreciate the display of skill overcoming both more advanced technology and numbers. The pilots aren't altogether bad either, and one of them is, Lelouch is reasonably sure, Jeremiah's knightmare. But where Jeremiah is a good pilot and his subordinates are decent, Kallen is _great_.

After an intricate, deadly dance, one of the blue markers belonging to the group of Southerlands blinks out of existence, switching with the marker indicating that the pilot had managed to eject from the damaged knightmare some distance away. Lelouch smirks.

Kallen: one, Southerlands: zero.

As only to be expected.

If there is one Black Knight that he will never hold in anything but high regard, it is Kozuki Kallen.

"Take the southern side," he points to a spot not quite on the curve where the rail lines came around. "You can either do the intelligent thing, and snipe our friends with our slash harkens from an advantageous vantage point in one of those buildings, or..."

Suzaku glances back at him, "Or?"

" _Or_ you can do the _Suzaku_ thing and get into a completely unnecessary close quarters engagement with two enemies that you _could_ take out without issue," Lelouch finishes exasperatedly.

Suzaku shakes his head just a little and Lelouch hears him snort as he shifts his path toward the buildings. "Just for that, I'm going to snipe them."

"Oh really?" Lelouch asks incredulously, "Just like that?" Fucking _Suzaku_...

"Yes," Suzaku says deadpan, "Just like--"

"Hush!" Lelouch hisses, reaching for the terrorist's radio. "Head for the west entrance on the rail lines," Lelouch commands in rapid-fire Japanese as soon as Kallen's Glasgow is mostly cornered by the two remaining Purist Southerland, one of whom Lelouch is sure belongs to Jeremiah Gottwald, judging by the skill displayed by the pilot. He has the nagging feeling that there still should have been three of them at this point, but he couldn't remember the exact way things had gone the first time so he sets the thought aside. He could be wrong though, so no matter how things went the first time, it has little enough bearing on what is happening _now_.

The one-armed knightmare continues to fight for several tense moments longer, but even this inexperienced Kallen knows when she is in over her head. Under the cover of dust and smoke, Kallen flees.

Good.

"Who the hell are you?" the firebrand demands, even as she does as Lelouch told her to, if only for the lack of a better idea, "How did you get this frequency?!"

"Does it honestly matter?" Lelouch skips introducing himself even as his voice is being distorted by the filter he had applied to the Southerland's communications systems before patching the rebel radio into them, "I believe that it does not matter at the moment who I am, but what I can do." Lelouch ignores Suzaku's intent stare when the pilot's head turns just enough to watch Lelouch out of the corner of his eye as he ushers their Southerland up the unsteady building close to the railway.

"Well, normally I'd like to know I'm not talking to someone who wants to toy with me," Kallen snarls sarcastically, even as she weaves back and forth to avoid obstacles and the bullets and slash harkens of her pursuers.

"Understandable," Lelouch allows, even as the red knightmare bursts into the view of the zoomed-in factsphere's display in a shower of narrowly missing large caliber bullets, "but irrelevant. I might tell you more later, should it happen that we become more than simply temporary allies of convenience."

"Lovely," Kallen huffs, and the Glasgow's landspinners screech and throw sparks as the knightmare tears down the tracks, closer and closer to where he and Suzaku lie in wait. "What now?" Kallen asks tensely as the Southerlands follow her onto the tracks, quickly gaining on her.

Right on time, further down the track, a train is heading in the opposite direction.

"Jump on the train," Lelouch tells her.

" _What?_ "

"Just do it."

The radio transmits a wordless snarl.

The Glasgow jumps and the train's seismic brakes screech as they automatically engage from the sudden and violent infliction of unexpected forces and the increase in weight. At Lelouch's nod, Suzaku lets a slash harken fly, crippling the lead knightmare before the pilot can react. The damaged Southerland explodes shortly after the projectiles retract when the destabilized Yggdrasil drive violently overloads. There was no time for the pilot to eject.

Suzaku turns the Southerland's gun in the second knightmare that Lelouch had noted as belonging to the Margrave, Suzaku doesn't aim for immediately fatal points and instead brings it to its knees by destroying its ankle joints, effectively hamstringing the large machine. More bullets rip the gun arm from its mounts. All of this happens only seconds before Jeremiah is forced to eject from his knightmare to save himself from being rammed by Kallen's mad bull rush.

When Kallen turns to attack the remaining Southerland, Suzaku's second slash harken slices into the knightmare's center mass, and the cascading failure of the Yggdrasil drive consumes the entire frame, pilot included.

After she scans their surroundings for more enemies, she finally goes to look in their direction, but Suzaku has already moved them forward, out of the camouflaging wreck of the building and farther into the line of sight of Kallen's disarmed Glasgow. With an economy of movement making the maneuver look effortless, even in a knightmare as clunky as the Southerland when compared to just the first Lancelot much less any of its successors, Suzaku has the knightmare leap from the more stable section of the bullet-riddled ruin of a building and down to the ground near the rail-lines safely before bringing them to a halt.

"Thanks," the red-haired rebel says guardedly after a moment, "You got me out of quite a jam there."

Lelouch doesn't particularly want her _thanks_. Respect for Kallen person and talents or no, thanks are the very last thing that he wants to hear at the moment. "No thanks are necessary," he deflects blandly, "Your assistance would be advantageous in winning this... skirmish, if you were inclined to lend it to me."

There is silence over the channel, "...Winning? Who the hell are you to talk about winning just like that?"

"I am Zero, and for now that is all that you need to know about me. I _can_ tell you right now though, that harassing the Britannians like this is futile. It might be irritating but in the end it is a pointless exercise and changes absolutely _nothing_ ," Lelouch informs her dispassionately.

"Yeah?" Kallen flares, "Well at least we're doing instead of sitting back and letting them walk all over us!"

"What you have done is brought a death sentence down upon Shinjuku for having spat in Britannia's eye. Are those kinds of losses acceptable to you, for such meagre gains?"

"We stole an important weapon from the Britannians!" she shouts.

"Ah, yes," Lelouch replies silkily, "The poison gas."

"How did you know it was poison gas?! What group are you with?"

Lelouch feels an involuntary tug at the edges of his lips, unable to help the cruel cast that it gains from the inclination that he feels to be less than benevolent towards any of the Traitor Knights even as he restrains it. His "group" doesn't exist. "I have no reason to answer your questions any more than you are obligated to answer mine, oh hunted fugitive and _terrorist_ ," Lelouch verbally stabs.

" _We are not terrorists!_ " Kallen bites back.

"Oh?" Lelouch asks with exaggerated skepticism, "Then what was the canister of poison gas for? Certainly a lethal nerve agent in quantities large enough to sentence hundreds of thousands of people to death in under a minute and watch them all die within fifteen is not going to be used for it's express purpose as a weapon of mass destruction and terror?"

" _What?!_ " Kallen shrieks.

* * *

Lelouch is lying.

Well, maybe not so much lying as creatively editing, judging by the tight, unhappy upturn of his lips. Most people would probably mistake it for a smile.

If Suzaku were to say he was surprised though, _he_ would be the one lying.

The way that Lelouch can lie and lie and lie but never let an untrue word pass his lips has never made Suzaku happy, and now that he is seeing Lelouch use it from his front row seat he still doesn't like it.

Lelouch might have needed a reminder, but it just isn't him to not intervene... unless it would have interfered in one of his plans. When Suzaku had asked him to do what he did best though, Lelouch probably hadn't _had_ any plans at all. He was expecting to be dead after all.

Unfortunately, in the amount of time that has passed, Lelouch is unlikely not to have come up with something but it's not given Suzaku enough time to have attempted to worm the strategic genius's plans out of him.

He listens closely to the way Lelouch handles meeting with the woman, girl really, that had once been Lelouch's most devoted follower and right hand before Suzaku had, in a twisted way, taken up that mantle.

"Did you not know?" Lelouch asks cruelly, twisting the knife even more.

"You're lying," Kallen snarls, but Suzaku can hear the doubting horror under the angry denial.

"I am not," Lelouch replies simply and leaves them hanging in the air between them.

"I… _I'm_ not lying either," Kallen says tightly after a long moment, "I'm _not_ a terrorist. I fight for the freedom of _Japan_. I'd never use something like, like _that_."

"No one in your 'group' would either then?" Lelouch says, a sly cast sliding onto his face.

"No!" Kallen immediately refuses.

Suzaku frowns dubiously. That sounds… false.

"I see," Lelouch's reply is pure sarcasm, "That is indeed good to know." He glances at Suzaku rather than staring at the screens. "If you had replied differently, then I am uncertain what I would have done with a certain last minute gift that I picked out." He meets Suzaku's gaze again and waves a hand at the train, "Open it."

Kallen's "What?" goes ignored as Suzaku guides his knightmare to grip the dented door and sidewall of the train and pry them apart, revealing gleaming ranks of Southerlands in the light of the sun.

"Holy…!" Kallen's single armed Glasgow edges closer to get a better luck. "Are those…?"

"New Southerlands fresh from the factory?" Lelouch says, "Of course. You are in luck, because none of them have been entered into the active military network and are not yet locked."

"Who the _hell_ are you?" Kallen breathes.

"Zero," Suzaku can _hear_ Lelouch's smirk, "just Zero for now."

"Alright, _Zero_ ," Kallen says, seemingly back to normal, "What's the catch?"

"Catch?" Lelouch asks, with an odd mix of amusement and approval. It's almost a laugh, not that anyone unfamiliar with him would recognize it.

"I'm not an idiot. Nobody just hands over this kind of firepower with no strings attached," Kallen says with her temper crackling under the edges, "What do you _want_?"

"World peace," Lelouch says with a touch of irony.

"Good for you," Kozuki snaps back in a lash of temper that Suzaku has long learned to respect from across the battlefield, "If you're not going to give me a straight answer, let's get back to what the hell you're doing skulking around Shinjuku in that Southerland of yours, much less a _Purist_ Southerland."

Whatever response that Lelouch might have made is cut off by the blast of gunfire striking the armor of their knightmare.

Instinctively, Suzaku throws his knightmare into reverse, landspinners smoking as he brings the assault rifle to bear before anything heavier can be used against him targeting…

The Black Knights?

No.

Suzaku's eyes narrow.

These people aren't Black Knights. Right now, they're just a rabble of rebels, and desperate ones on top of that, ready to fight like rats backed into a corner.

Lelouch makes a disgusted noise in his ear, and Suzaku can just imagine the look on his face, " _Ohgi_. Of course."

Right.

"Well?" Suzaku asks, not letting the angry, frightened faces of the people who had been Lelouch's first supporters sway him one way or the other, letting the bullets chip uselessly away at the Southerland's paint once he verifies that they have no weapons capable of endangering pilot and passenger.

"Hey!" Kozuki's Glasgow moves between them, making them stop after the first few bullets ricochet off of their ace's knightmare's armor instead of their target's, "Knock it off! This guy saved my butt so stop shooting at him! It's not like it's going to do you any good you know with those guns you have."

"But Kallen!"

"Don't be idiots!" the temperamental pilot snarls at them, "We need all the help we can get!"

Huh...

That's quite a change in tune from the way she was reacting just ten seconds earlier.

Lelouch sighs whimsically, "It looks like we will join forces then." He flicks the communicator on and Suzaku lowers the rifle so he isn't pointing it straight at Kozuki's cockpit. Prudent or not, necessary or not, holding a gun to someone's cockpit like that is just poor manners.

Not that manners really have much place on the battlefield.

From there, Lelouch maneuvers his freshly acquired, ragtag force to crush the ones being sent after them with contemptuous ease and, in between sparing a few moments every so often to give muttered praises to Saint Darwin that the Southerland does not have the maneuverability to pull off Suzaku's signature spinning kick -- which is, from the bits and pieces of muttered invectives Suzaku picks up, _still_ ridiculous and utterly impossible no matter _how_ many times he pulls it off -- he focuses on cleaning up any potential loose ends he might be faced with after this whole Shinjuku debacle is wrapped up. _Again._

Only this time, instead of being a faceless voice over the radio and directing the rebels while staying out of sight, skulking about in a stolen Purist Southerland that Suzaku is hunting for, Lelouch is a faceless voice in a stolen Purist Southerland directing them from within their ranks and fighting by their side with an ally of his own.

The battle progresses practically in the blink of an eye with the way Lelouch dominates the field just like Suzaku is used to all the way up until the Lancelot appears like Suzaku has been half expecting.

The pilot of the Lancelot is... not _bad_ , per se, but to two people who know the true potential of the machine, the rough, unpolished hands at the controls make them wince. A high performance knightmare frame such as the Lancelot deserves better than such obvious mediocrity.

That seems to decide Lelouch as he scoffs at the sight of the white knightmare moving so awkwardly.

"If they are going to taunt us with their toys then we will just have to take it from them: we are capturing that knightmare," Lelouch announces, to the consternation of his ad hoc forces, "Try to keep it facing north. N-1 will take it down." Lelouch pauses then adds dryly, "Please try _not_ to hit us in the meantime."

He switches the transmitter off and says, "Circle around behind the Lancelot. Come from the rear and take out the pilot but leave it usable."

So much faith in my abilities, Suzaku thinks in response to the amusingly straightforward orders. Though it has never been what he is capable of on the battlefield that has been the problem. The knightmare pilot splits from the pack of proto-Black Knights, slowing once he has become less of an obvious target when compared to the larger group stolen knightmares.

The Lancelot blazes past and Suzaku swings back behind the Lancelot, speeding in its wake like a lagging shadow. Even if the prototype has a subpar pilot, it doesn't mean that the machine can't reach speeds greater than even the upgraded version of the Southerland.

The Lancelot, lacking any form of ranged weapon for this battle draws its blade when it closes in on its prey. An off-balance slash carves off a knightmare's limb but does no appreciable damage, at least not enough to remove it from the field of battle. The temperamental machine's hypersensitive controls have, luckily for the guy on the receiving side, thrown the blade's trajectory off from a lethal blow to a glancing one.

It is when the pilot of the Lancelot tries to reorient the machine for another pass that Suzaku strikes. He rushes the knightmare, _his_ knightmare, his Lancelot, from behind, using his familiarity with the knightmare frame's blind spot to remain unseen by the pilot. In a ruthless, brutal move, Suzaku rockets the Southerland forward and jabs the knightmare's small blade into the cockpit. In a surgical move and using his knowledge of the knightmare's cockpit layout, Suzaku pierces the cockpit and destroys what Lloyd had once half mockingly called the "most valuable part" but goes no farther so that he doesn't damage anything that will prevent Suzaku from piloting the knightmare himself.

The white knight immediately stops fighting, instead it staggers forward, sliding off of the Southerland's blade, and collapses to rest on one knee with the robotic precise motions of the emergency autopilot's on-the-fly controls.

The tip of the knife is stained red.

"Whoa," the radio crackles but the sounds of shock of the still-terrorists is of little more than background noise at the moment.

In this case, for Lelouch's purposes, the so-called "most valuable part" is the only one that is replaceable until they have access to the kinds of resources that they are going to need. There was a dead-man's switch for that purpose, but not for an ejection system, much less a self-destruct one.

"Well that went well," Lelouch comments blandly in Suzaku's ear, resting his chin on Suzaku's shoulder as they stare at the defeated knightmare, "Even if the pilot was no monster like you, I had honestly expected that to be more difficult."

Suzaku flinches at Lelouch's wording. Monster. Right. "It was probably some other honorary Britannian that Lloyd conned into being a test pilot." The Earl probably won't lose any sleep over the loss of the pilot, even if he undoubtedly will lose sleep over losing possession the Lancelot, his "baby".

Lelouch nudges him, "So? Are you going to claim your prize?"

Suzaku cringes, imagining the condition of the inside of the Lancelot's cockpit. "It's going to be bloody," Suzaku says flatly, hands clenched tightly around the controls. He isn't squeamish but he doesn't like seeing the effect of knightmare scale weaponry on human flesh and now he is going to be sitting in pools of blood until the cockpit can be cleaned out.

"Yes it will," Lelouch agrees and he sighs. "You know we cannot leave it, bloody or not."

Suzaku turns, half standing in the cramped confiner of the cockpit and meets Lelouch's eyes, heedless of the geass burning in them, looking for something in Lelouch's gaze. The moment stretches and by the time Lelouch glances away, Suzaku still isn't sure if he'd seen it. Instead when he turns back, Lelouch raises an eyebrow, "Well? We do not exactly have all day."

"Fair enough," the knightmare ace reluctantly agrees and turns back to the controls, powering the knightmare down so he can get out.

It is a bit of an awkward dance between the two of them so Suzaku will not be knocked out of the chair when they open the cockpit and the seat slides out yet also keep Lelouch out of view of trigger-happy enemies and tentative allies alike but Suzaku manages it. Once he is standing firmly on the ground, he sends the line zipping back up so that the cockpit can close.

Once the Southerland and Lelouch are secure again, Suzaku jogs over to the kneeling, directionless knightmare that is still _his_ even if he has technically never seen the prototype before. Using muscle-memory from all his experience with knightmares and Lancelot in particular, Suzaku climbs up the white armor to the damaged cockpit and hits the release to open the cockpit.

The warped mechanisms in the door grind unhappily making Suzaku worry for a moment that he had damaged them too much, despite the knightmare's overall robustness, before they open. Screeching, the warped tracks move the seat out, and shows him the damage that had resulted from his strike.

There isn't a body in the seat: there is a disjointed heap of two _halves_ of a body instead, with blood and gore sprayed violently on the white and gold walls of the cockpit as well as the seat and the controls from the force of the killing strike.

Suzaku swallows thickly but moves to dispose of the body. Mindful that the prototype is riddled with sensors to monitor the pilot and a camera so that the techs can see said pilot, he climbs over the mouth of the cockpit and claps his hand over the camera before flipping down onto the arms of the seat. Hand still over the lens, Suzaku twists and flips the breaker for the bulk of the monitoring systems. He holds his position for fifteen more seconds for the cockpit voice recorder and pilot visual monitor to run to the end of their rather tiny battery backup supply. There would be no point in his acrobatics if he let them find out who he is through carelessness now.

He quickly drags the body from its position, blood covering his hands as he shoves the mangled wreck of what used to be a person over the long drop to the ground.

He doesn't watch the pieces hit the ground but that doesn't exempt his ears from picking up the sound of it.

Gritting his teeth to brace himself, Suzaku lovers himself into the blood-soaked wreck of a pilot's seat and flips the switches to close the compromised cockpit once more. As soon as the mangled doors close, Suzaku checks the settings of the instruments, taking a moment to alter a few things and disconnect the engagement data recorder as the last of the back boxes that would provide Camelot and therefore Shneizel with information that the prince really doesn't need about who has run off with one of his pet projects.

* * *

"With the Britannian trump card neutralized and their forces routed, head to the northwest and break through the perimeter where it is weakest. After that, you should evacuate as many people as you can manage and then scatter and hide," Lelouch announces to the group at large as soon as Suzaku gets the Lancelot back to its feet, "The more knightmares that you manage to retain, the greater the capability you will have to fight back on future battlefields. The prototype's pilot, N-1, will assist you"

"And what about you, Zero?" Kallen asks with a shrewdness Lelouch has missed.

Lelouch chuckles, "The _venerable_ Viceroy and I have an appointment that I do not wish to be late for."

"Are you nuts?! That's suicide!"

"I am afraid that the state of my sanity is somewhat debatable," Lelouch replies with droll, ironic amusement as he peels off from the group, "As for my upcoming little royal tête-á-tête being suicide? I feel required to inform you that you are greatly underestimating my capabilities. I have done things several times more audacious than walking brazenly into the stronghold of the enemy and accomplished them quite well. I do not die _quite_ so easily." Admitting that he has already committed suicide via Suzaku and turned it into a spectacle among spectacles that technically never happened is a bad idea.

"I will be unreachable after this," Lelouch continues, "but I will be opening a line of contact with your cell in the near future via my own network. If there is nothing else…?"

There is a silence over the radios and Lelouch takes that as an assent and he decides to leave it at that for the rebels to chew on. He switches to the private line he had set up with the Lancelot, "N-1: After the others leave, retrieve Nu before you do the same. Having her picked up by the army before I can figure out how I want to deal with her would be... messy. I will get Clovis to call off his men."

"Yes, your... Yes, Zero-sama," is Suzaku's stumbling but prompt reply before the Lancelot, Southerlands, and the lone Glasgow form up with as they head northwest in a somewhat organized pack rather than a true formation. With the encirclement broken and then mostly annihilated, there are so many holes in the forces that should have been maintaining the ghetto's border that even the knightmare frames the rebels had commandeered can break through them with ease.

"Zero-sama?"

Lelouch blinks, realizing that his line with Suzaku is still open. "What is it, N-1?"

"You aren't going to kill the viceroy, _are_ you?" It isn't a question, Lelouch notes uneasily, but a prediction built on the times of familiarity they've shared.

Lelouch hesitates for a moment too long in replying, silence filling their channel, likely taken aback by the correct guess.

"You're going to geass him," Suzaku says knowingly, "...What command are you going to give him?"

Lelouch isn't sure if it is morbid curiosity that drives Suzaku to ask him that question. Either way, Suzaku seems to take care to keep any sort of expectation out of his voice. More silence stretches between them because Lelouch honestly can't tell what Suzaku wants to hear.

"I am going to use geass," Lelouch eventually affirms, cautiously, "It... really is the best option." Between killing Clovis, kidnapping him to start off a collection of royals, and placing him under Lelouch's geass so he can be left in his current position as the viceroy of "Area 11", the last is the one that will have the best outcome. "I still do not have the exact wording of it worked out, but I need the power that Clovis has as Viceroy to do the most good."

"I see," Suzaku replies neutrally. Oddly, it _still_ doesn't even sound all that disapproving. Lelouch stares at the old fashioned radio, the only real link between his purist knightmare and the prototype, baffled at the sudden change in stance on the topic of geass. He squints at it suspiciously. Maybe Suzaku has somehow been replaced by an imposter?

Really, the death of Clovis, no matter how much it was deserved or not in the end, had been the cause of so much of the trouble that he had faced as Zero, along with _Nu_ of all people. His half-brother was incompetent, really, at least when it came to military matters, so keeping him in place and using him as a puppet within the government instead of simply killing him will be a coup. Forestalling intervention in Japan by Cornelia's blooded troops will be a blessing and the lack of revenge based hatred will dull the Princess's bite in the eventuality that she does come to Japan anyway, especially with Clovis there to distract her with his parties.

He doesn't say this however, nor the many threads of plans that spin off into the future, but keeping his movements in Shinjuku from coming back to haunt him like they had over and over and over again before.

Keeping things the same by killing Clovis, even if it might possibly give him slightly more accurate foreknowledge does not even compare to the opportunity he has before him. Clovis's continued life, ironically enough for someone who has practically made it a specialty, is worth more in the grand scheme of things than his death.

Lelouch has never needed to be able to see the future to put his plans together, and what was the point of being able to redo everything if he just does everything exactly the same for the sake of some already obsolete foreknowledge?

That isn't him at all.

At the moment he might as well have metaphorically stacked the deck so far in his favor it is almost ridiculous. Keeping things the same would be a crime against nature, _his_ nature.

"What command would get the best results?" Suzaku asks in that same studious neutrality.

"You know what I am going to say," Lelouch replies stiffly.

"Then do it," Suzaku says, "I know that you won't abuse it."

"That... is quite the change in tune, N-1," Lelouch says, forcing the tangled accusations to stay behind his teeth instead of letting them slip through. It is the closest that he has come to mentioning the radical change Suzaku has undertaken since the world had turned over on them both.

"Maybe," is all Suzaku says in response.

Lelouch scowls at the empty _, meaningless_ reply but doesn't say anything more on the subject either. "I have arrived at destination, proceeding to target. Zero, out."

From there, it is child's play to slip through the chaotic mess of the perimeter guard and travel all the way to the heart of the mobile command center where Clovis unknowingly awaited him.

* * *

"Attention all forces! Cease fire at once! I Clovis, Third Prince of Britannia and Royal Viceroy of Area 11, hereby command you: All forces are ordered to cease fire at once! You will also cease any destruction of any buildings or property. All casualties, whether Britannian or Eleven shall be treated equally and without prejudice. In the name of Clovis la Britannia, you are hereby ordered: Cease fire at once! I shall allow no further fighting!"

"Are you satisfied?" Clovis asks tightly, watching Lelouch with wariness in his eyes.

"Mostly," he says, stepping closer. It is difficult to look his long dead elder brother in the eyes because all he sees when he does is the bullet hole he had put between those fearful blue eyes and the sticky red mess the carefully styled blond hair had turned into.

The still living blond unclenches his hands from around the arm rests and he rests his cheek in the palm of his hand, "What now? Shall we sing a few ballads? Or perhaps play a game of--"

"Chess?" Lelouch interjects, remembering the words with a strange sort of bizarre, almost _nostalgic_ clarity. He comes to a stop at the beginning of the red carpet leading up to the throne Clovis has built himself, "I am afraid that I shall have to decline, since you appear to be as lackluster an opponent as ever."

Clovis is tense, Lelouch notices. His nonchalance is merely ingrained princely bravado in the face of Lelouch's threat to his life. How he had missed it the first time escaped him, unless the sheer terrified, desperate rage he had felt that day had blinded him to anything but moving forward with his vengeance. "You are no true commander of men, Clovis la Britannia. You are too careless and act without appreciation of the consequences. Investigating immortality? Human experimentation? Ghetto purges? What next?"

Clovis pales, "I have no idea what you are talking--"

"Code R," is all Lelouch says, cutting Clovis off again with a sweep of his hand so they can both skip the pointless pleas of ignorance.

"I... How did you--?"

"What happened to the gentle artist I once knew?" Lelouch asks instead of answering, "What changed him into the lying fop in front of me who plasters his face across the media and surrounds himself with sycophants?"

He had wondered these things after he had killed his half brother the first time and had never found out the answers. Clovis had died at Lelouch's hand and there had been no one left that could tell him.

"Who _are_ you?" Clovis grits out in lieu of answering Lelouch's questions, true fear beginning to shine through the cracks of his mask.

"It has been several years since we last met, so I am unsurprised that you do not recognize my voice. I was just a boy then, after all." Lelouch removes his stolen helmet and tosses it negligently aside. Careful not to lift his gaze higher than Clovis's throat now that there is no layer of protection against his geass between them, he dips a short, mocking bow, "Lelouch vi Britannia, at your service." Lelouch lets all the irony he feels about that particular word choice flavor his speech.

This time there will be _no_ kneeling.

"L-Lelouch?! Little Lelouch?" Clovis gracelessly stands, obviously put off balance by the unexpected revelation.

Lelouch smirks. _Perfect._

"Is it truly you? You are supposed to be dead!" Clovis's normally steady artist's hands are trembling.

"It is I," Lelouch confirms, "and I have returned from death to change this world." It is even truer this time when he says those words, irony of ironies. He leisurely walks up the inclined path to Clovis. "You never answered my questions, brother."

"I..."

Lelouch sighs when the elder prince flounders and casts about for leverage, "Let us start with something simple: Why did you order Shinjuku Ghetto purged?"

"Why?" Clovis is audibly mystified by the unexpected turn of the conversation, settling him somewhat at what he obviously perceives to be such an easy question. "I did not think I needed a reason," he answers easily, "They _are_ just Elevens after all."

Lelouch restrains a flinch, hand tightening on his gun as he listens to the very thing that he wishes to change most about the world coming straight from Clovis's own mouth. Again.

Numbers this... Numbers that…

Bile rises in the back of his throat and he is reminded just how much he despises the pointless, petty racism that Britannia is so dearly in love with. Lelouch might be bathed in blood and hold a kill count many times that of Clovis to his name, but he has never sought to add to it just because of someone's _ethnicity_.

Oh how he desires to stamp it out and grind those worthless ideals into dust beneath his heel once more.

And he will.

Starting with Clovis.

" _Wrong!_ " Lelouch reprimands sharply with a cutting slash of his hand, "They are human beings, just like us. Human beings that Britannia is insistent get trod upon, just because it can." He shakes his head, "But you do not believe that. The Empire has twisted you, just like it twists everything that it gets its claws into. Here is something that will likely matter more to you: The reason that your Royal Guard is dead is because my personal knight took exception to their attempt to kill me, because of _your_ orders. How ironic would it be that I survive everything that this country can throw at me only to be murdered by family...? Just like my mother, Marianne."

"My Guard tried to kill you?" Clovis asks, appalled and angry on Lelouch's behalf, only to freeze when he realizes the rest of what his younger brother has said, "...you know who killed Lady Marianne?!" Clovis rises to his feet and takes an urgent step towards Lelouch only to be brought up short by the gun pointing unerringly at him. "Who did it?"

"And what, exactly, would you do with that information?" Lelouch asks him rhetorically, restraining his more... _vehement_ signs of contempt. "You are a fool, Clovis," Lelouch tells the older prince almost pityingly, "a soft dreamer who should have stayed an artist instead of playing war." Clovis has even missed the most important part of his words that would have given him a key piece of knowledge as to who would have succeeded in killing her, but for geass. Never mind that Charles had purged just about every scrap information about VV from existence. "I live my life by the doctrine that the only ones who should kill are those who are prepared to be killed and unfortunately for you, Clovis la Britannia, Third Prince of the Holy Britannian Empire, even if you have never taken a life with your own two hands, your orders have purposefully caused the remorseless slaughter of countless unarmed Japanese for no other reason than the fact that they _dare_ to exist makes you _anything_ but innocent."

In his peripheral vision, Lelouch can see Clovis's eyes widen in horror as he takes a step back, tripping into his throne when there is no more room for Clovis to put between then. "Y-You would not..." Clovis stammers when Lelouch steps closer, "We are brothers, Lelouch! Remember the times in Aries Villa? All the times you beat me at chess?"

"Do not worry, _dear_ _brother_ , I have no intention of killing you," Lelouch says, grimly satisfied, not _this_ time, "though what I am going to do to you might arguably be worse."

As he raises his eyes to meet Clovis's, the other prince manages to get out a confused and fearful, "What...?" before his geass ensnares its target. The blond's face goes slack and his eyes become dull was red rings form around the rims of his irises.

"Follow my every command," he orders his entranced brother, the general wording sinking in and irrevocably altering Clovis's future. Lelouch takes a step back and patiently waits for the daze to fade before saying another word and risk potentially embedding another permanent, unchangeable order. If one of the orders he intends to give Clovis gets tangled up in his geass, then Clovis will be forever altered, without recourse save for the still, as of yet, nonexistent geass canceller. Despite the sins Clovis has committed, Lelouch will never allow unintentional orders to bring harm to those he has such absolute power over, nor those around them.

The lesson he had learned the hard way with Euphemia is one that has been branded into his memory for all time.

Never again.

The memory of those horrible moments leaves him feeling grim by the time Clovis blinks his way back to cognizance with no memory of the past few moments since Lelouch had looked up. Clovis stares at him with a disoriented expression, likely because Lelouch probably appears to have teleported between blinks. Not looking away, Lelouch watches as horror and realization steals over Clovis's fair features. "Your eyes... That symbol...!"

"That is correct," Lelouch says impassively, as unmovable as stone, "I am going to give you a quick lesson on what you were tampering with when you captured and started experimenting on C.C. and while I do, _you_ are going to listen."

The red of his geass's effect on Clovis is so faint that Lelouch could have easily missed it, showing just how attentively Clovis is already doing so.

Experimenting. That one clinical word makes it sound so much cleaner than it really was. Lelouch knows from the documents on Code R that what Bartley and his scientists did to her was anything _but_ clean.

As despicable as Clovis's actions for Code R might be, it is amusing that he has been getting involved in their father's business without knowing it himself. If the current emperor had been aware of Clovis's actions involving CC, or other geass related tops, it is rather likely that the blond prince would have been made to forget. Which leads to the supposition that Clovis's ambition would not do to be underestimated if he desired, desires, to create the geass-canceller.

"My geass is that of Absolute Command," Lelouch explains, "With it, I can place a single command upon a person and that person must fulfill that command... or die trying. Even if the order is completely antithetical to the person's very nature they cannot disobey. With just a few words I can turn a consummate pacifist into an unrepentant mass murderer, capable of slaughtering by the hundreds or vice versa, making a bloodthirsty killer never raise his hand to harm another ever again. Or, and this applies to you, Clovis, I can give a command that instead ensures the person will follow all subsequent orders I give."

The blood drains out of Clovis's face.

"That is right. _I_ am the one who controls your future now."

Clovis is deathly pale and trembling, holding out a hand towards him in supplication, "Lelouch..."

"However," Lelouch consoles him, brushing the entreaty aside, "while I might not be a kind master, neither am I an unnecessarily cruel one." It is a cold comfort, Lelouch knows, when it is exchanged for a person's self-determination and agency. "You are my tool to use now but that also makes you my responsibility to care for and I do my best to take care of that which belongs to me."

That he can hold the entire world in the palms of his hands should he but _try_... well…

He has already had plenty of experience in taking care of an entire world after he had made it his. For now, the only world that he controls will be that of his half brother.

"...I see," Clovis replies tersely, eyes wild and trapped.

"Now..." Lelouch says, " _Listen to my commands_."

The glint of an active geass is again a mere flicker in Clovis's eyes, but the command will ensure that he doesn't try to block the orders out at some point before Lelouch is finished. A sad little cruel smile curls his lips.

* * *

In the cold light of day, Clovis stares at the painting he had done from memory of Lelouch and Nunnally as he best remembered them: young, happy, alive and well. He thinks of Lelouch as he had met the long thought-dead prince the day before.

Clovis dips his brush into the purple paint and with a few strokes purple eyes glare out at him from the empty canvas, accusing.

The mostly grown Lelouch had not been happy at all.

Darker purples and blacks form the shadows that Lelouch had stalked out of like a predatory beast.

Lelouch had been cold and hateful and Clovis knows that the cutely arrogant young brat of a boy who thought he was so much smarter than everyone else -- and most the time was right -- and had always trounced him in chess has grown up into a steely general with eyes too old for his face who can step onto the battlefield and turn the battle in the favor of the side of his choosing as easily as he once crushed his opponents across a chessboard.

Changing brushes and paint, pale skin and refined, almost delicate features that Clovis had thought he would never have the chance to see mature into that of a young man take shape on the canvas next, framed by dark, almost black hair.

This new, disillusioned prince could have taken Clovis's life without blinking if he hadn't seen a use for keeping Clovis as viceroy. And his expression when Clovis had justified himself to the younger prince by calling the Shinjuku residents "just Elevens" when he asked why... It had been, and indeed still is even in the light of day, absolutely terrifying.

Daubs of white and darker smudges of shadows bring the intent, laser-focused eyes to life.

Geass…

Clovis picks up another brush and dips the very tip into red and bring it to the canvas only to hesitate.

His hand trembles… and falls.

That too terrifies Clovis.

He has spent enough time and funds researching the phenomenon of immortality that he knows of the potential of geass but due to the subject's lack of cooperation, it had been out of his reach and therefore right on the edge of being academic. That Lelouch has a geass of such far-reaching power is… awful. In every meaning of the word.


End file.
